Chapter 16
Miran
His impatience must’ve shown because Section Commander Belor and several other high-ranking officers finally gave up on getting more useful information out of him and released him from active duty on the Ardent or his gunship.
He was free to court Nova for the rest of the journey, not that he wouldn’t help the crew when needed, but he’d be at the very bottom of the labor request chart.
Everyone knew he’d slept with Nova, even though he hadn’t officially said anything. They simply knew. From the mumblings, he knew they were all waiting to see if mating marks showed up on her skin before trying to get her attention.
He’d left Saris standing outside his room because some of the crew might not be willing to wait.
There was no doubt that the red design would appear around her neck and shoulders to show that they were a biological match. After their rocky start, he was going to have to work damn hard to convince her of his love and devotion.
He was looking forward to every moment of it!
Glancing at his data bracelet, he saw a message from Saris noting that Nova was eating in the galley with Nisha. He didn’t know Nisha well, but it was clear she and Warik had already formed a strong bond. Having the two women become friends could only help his case.
He rushed to the galley to find Nisha talking animatedly about something and Nova nodding.
Even as he walked across the mostly empty galley, he noticed a table of warriors staring at them but trying not to be obvious about it.
It was probably because Saris was there that they didn’t approach the women.
Suddenly, Warik barreled past him to stand next to Nisha. “They need you on the Assist.”
Both women stood up with concerned expressions.
“What’s wrong?” Nisha asked.
“What can I do?” Nova asked at the same time.
Warik ignored Nova and focused on Nisha. “There's something wrong with the monitoring tech. I thought you might be able to figure out how to make it work more consistently.”
Before she could agree to help, Warik grabbed her hand and led her away. Nova tried to follow.
“Do you need help with the children?” Nova asked. “I could help keep them calm or help the menders and med techs.”
Warik answered over his shoulder as Nisha jogged to keep up with him. “You’re not needed.”
Nisha didn’t notice the exchange or Nova’s dejected expression, the scarily intelligent woman was busy mumbling to herself again. She was probably already solving the problem before she even knew the entire issue.
It was clear that Nova hadn’t noticed Miran yet. He rushed to her side and gently touched her arm. She looked up at him, a little startled.
“Miran? I thought you were in a meeting,” she said.
“They let me out when they finally figured out that I didn’t understand anything about Diniki politics,” he answered wryly.
She brightened. “Do they need help negotiating?”
“No, I think they were simply trying to understand everything that happened,” he said.
Her face fell again. “Oh, well I think I’ll walk around the ship while you eat.”
He was confused by her statement for a moment until he remembered that they were in the galley. “I came here to find you, not because I’m hungry. I’d like to show you around the ship.”
The corners of her lips lifted in a smile. “That would be nice.”
When he held out his hand, she tangled her fingers with his. Even though he liked how she looked wearing his pants and shirt, she needed clothes that fit. Looking down, he noticed her shoes. She was still wearing the too large shoes she’d found in the room on his gunship.
“Let’s go shopping first,” he said, leading her out of the galley. He gave Saris a small nod to indicate his gratefulness. The warrior nodded back before standing and heading to a different set of doors. He was probably going to work a shift somewhere.
Miran felt mildly guilty for not working as hard as his fellow warriors, but he also knew they didn’t hold it against him. Every single one of them wished they could take time off to spend with a Decanted mate.
It didn’t take them long to get to the correct storage room. Nova pulled in a shocked breath when they walked in.
“It’s like a store!” she exclaimed, dragging him to the nearest rack of clothes.
“At first, every warrior would buy Hissa-style outfits in hopes of getting to gift them to a Decanted woman,” he explained as she started rifling through the clothes with her free hand.
“But that was a problem because they’d end up being too big or too small.
Our section commander decided to have an entire storage room dedicated to items instead.
That way, the humans could find what they liked best and what fit.
Further in there are shoes and at the very back there are items like cleansers and hair ornaments. ”
She began pulling out an outfit only to freeze in place and look up at him. “Do they offer time credit or do I need to pay for everything all at once?”
He made an encouraging sound. “You don’t pay for anything. You could take one or two of everything in here if you like, although that would be a lot to pack later.”
“You can’t mean that,” she said with a little shake of her head. “Some of these look like they’re made out of soliman silk. What if I went through and picked out all the silk pieces?”
“Then we’d simply buy more,” he said, feeling a little confused. “But if you only choose garments made of soliman silk, they won’t all fit.”
Her expression turned indulgent, as if she was about to explain something to a child. “But I could sell them later.”
He still didn’t understand. “Why would you want to do that? If you want credits, I can give them to you.”
“You would?” she asked.
“Do you have a data pad in your bag?” he asked. This was an easy thing to prove.
Her brows furrowed with worry. She shoved the garment back onto the rack, let go of his hand, and started talking quickly.
“I have the one from my room in the gunship, but you said I could use it, and I took it over to the Assist because you said we wouldn’t be able to go back and forth so I grabbed a lot of things and…”
Her words trailed off, and she scowled when he started laughing.
“The data pad was yours to keep,” he said, holding out his hand. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything, I only needed to see it.”
Grumbling, she dug around in her bag until she found the data pad and thumped it down into his open hand. He ignored her annoyance and quickly accessed the credit section of the data pad. It didn’t take him long to transfer half the credits in his personal account to the one on the data pad.
“Please try not to lose that,” he said, handing it back. Because the transfer was marked as free-use, anyone could use it if they had access to the data pad.
She gave him a skeptical look as she accepted the data pad and looked at the display. She gasped, fumbled, and almost dropped the device.
“That…that can’t be real!” she stuttered. She gripped the edges tightly and looked up at him with an angry expression. “This is a joke, right?”
He would’ve laughed if he didn’t know that would make her more upset. “I would never joke like that. The number you see is real. It’s all yours.”
“I could buy a small outpost with this amount of wealth!”
“And probably have enough left over to run it for a few years,” he agreed. “Although why you would want to buy an outpost is a mystery."
She pressed the data pad to her chest, ignoring his comment. “If I ran, you wouldn’t ever be able to find me.”
Honestly, he hadn’t thought of that. “After everything you’ve seen, do you still think we intend to use you for nefarious purposes?”
She shook her head. “No, not really. But I’m still not sold on settling down on Hissa. This is the first time I’ve been free, what if I want to explore?”
He could understand that, even if he didn’t agree with it. “Give my homeworld a chance first. You might find you like it.”
“Do I have a choice?”
He didn’t want to answer that so he pointed to the Hissa-style top she’d partially pulled out before they’d gotten distracted. “Do you like that one?”
She shoved the data pad into her bag, as if he might take it back, then grabbed the shirt. “It’s pretty and made out of soliman silk, what’s not to like?”
“Do you want it?” he asked.
“I do, but it’s too delicate,” she said. “I’m not good at being still. I’d probably snag it on something and rip it before the day was out.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Miran assured her, pulling out the matching pants. “You should wear it. Pick out a dozen outfits. If they get ruined, we can come back here for more.”
She looked around, taking in the large quantity of items. “These are all so bright and colorful, but all I’ve seen you guys wearing is those drab matching blue outfits. Are they a uniform? Do you dress brighter when you’re not working?”
Miran shook his head. “No, it’s not the male's purpose to be bright and colorful. Our women are supposed to shine. Even back when we weren’t a wealthy species, we focused on dressing our daughters, sisters, and wives in the nicest, most beautiful things we could afford.
As a young child, I remember my father and my mother’s brother fighting over who got to buy her a coat she wanted. ”
He was suddenly swamped by a sense of loss. He’d been young when the Great Death ravaged his species.
Even though his father’s body survived the disease, his mind hadn’t. Unable to live without the women at the center of their lives, many men had decided to let the dense and dangerous jungle of Hissa end their lives. His father had been one of them.
Miran ended up being taken in by his uncle who did his best but was also in deep mourning.
“Hey, are you okay?”
He looked down to find Nova standing close and stroking his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, feeling stupid. “Sometimes the pain feels like it happened yesterday instead of over ten years ago.”
Moving her bag, she wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. He automatically did the same, taking comfort in her closeness. He hadn’t been held since he was a child. He’d never get enough of Nova’s soft touch and warm embrace.
“I understand,” she whispered. “I have very clear memories of being decanted. I was the biological age of six. I remember being cold and scared. The techs and doctors weren’t cruel, but they weren’t kind either.
At first, we were all kept in the same room, laying in rows of cots as they worked on getting our brains and bodies to work together.
I wanted to cry, but I was scared to show how upset I was all the time.
No one talked to us as if we were human.
They acted like we were machines to be calibrated, not children to be cared for. ”
She took in a long, shaky breath before continuing.
“We didn’t even have names yet, we were numbers.
I was 07267 and the girl next me was 07268.
We looked for comfort wherever we could find it.
When no one was looking, we’d hold hands.
Then she didn’t pass one of the developmental tests and they took her away.
I never saw her again. There isn’t a single day of my life that I don’t think about 07268. ”
Miran sucked in a shocked breath. He’d heard that the facilities growing humans to sell were callous, but he never expected such a horrific level of cruelty.
He tightened his hold on her and pressed his cheek to the top of her head. “I’m so sorry.”
“I gave her a name,” Nova said. “When Riff named me Nova, I decided she should have a name too.”
“What name did you choose?”
“Star,” Nova said, then chuckled. “I wanted to give her a powerful name, and there isn’t anything more powerful in the universe than a star. Some days, I imagined that her soul went to the sun in the human solar system and burned them all for what they did to us.”
“I don’t know if this helps, but all the people that were working in the location where you were grown died when the place exploded,” he said. “Probably not long after you left.”
She pulled back enough to give him a fierce grin. “Yes, that makes me feel better.”
“Good,” he grunted, happy to see her satisfaction.
“Anyway, I didn’t tell you all that to make you feel bad for me. I wanted you to know that I understood what it was like to lose someone,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll remember Star with you. She won’t be forgotten."
“Never,” she agreed, then started blinking rapidly. She pulled out of his grip and quickly rubbed her hands over her eyes to brush away the tears. “How do you have so much wealth? Did you rob a station?”
“Nothing like that,” he said, willing to change the subject if that was what she wanted. “We discovered that both our moons have deep veins of dimmerion.
Nova looked confused. “But your government owns the moons and the dimmerion. That doesn’t explain how you have so much wealth.”
“The dimmerion made our entire species wealthy," he said. “We all get paid the same no matter what job we do. Our yearly pay is based on a set percentage of the wealth gained from dimmerion sales after the government takes out what’s needed to buy warships and other communal things.”
Her jaw dropped. “You all have that much?”
Her confusion was a little adorable. “Yes, we all have that much. Which means you shouldn’t hesitate to pick out what you want.”
“I’m getting one of everything that fits!” she declared and started grabbing items with exaggerated greed, making him laugh.
“As long as you don’t try to wear them all at the same time,” he teased.
“I’ll do what I want,” she sang, dancing deeper into the room with him following close behind.
In the end, she didn't pick out any silk outfits because it turned out she didn’t like how the fabric felt on her skin. Her disappointment was cute and quickly brushed away when she spotted all the shiny hair ornaments.
“My skin might not want fancy things, but my hair doesn’t have a choice!” she declared.
Her hair was jingling with decorations by the time they left.