Later he was there for her again, when she got her Interstellar Sociology degree. He knew of an exciting job on the observation ship where he worked as a security officer.
Two months ago, after Blevin’s birthday celebration, they had kissed, a kiss that still curled her toes in memory. They had avoided each other ever since. Too big a change, she thought.
Olvar sat down. “I feel hollow,” he whispered.
“Elodi, go fix us a meal for three. Janna, go get dressed and bring Olvar some clothes.”
Olvar scowled. “Girl clothes?”
Aerria grinned. His homeland had gender based clothing. “Children’s play clothes. Comfortable.”
Janna brought play clothes, pull on pants and long tunics in bright primary colors.
“Children here wear bright colors.” He observed himself in the mirror. “I like bright colors. They are happy.”
“Come, let’s have meal.”
“Where is your dad?” Olvar asked Janna while Aerria served soup and bread.
“My dad died when I was a tiny baby. His name was Travis. Blevin, my big brother, is with his tutor now. They don’t really have school here, so we have tutors.”
“Is he nice?” Olvar looked worried.
“Oh, yes. But he doesn’t get home until late because he has study group. Mom says sometimes study group is play group for big boys.”
After the meal Aerria sent the children to Janna’s room to play, and then sat at her desk in a state of near panic. Janna...Aerria knew Janna was very bright, some of her class work was near Blevin’s level. Maybe the ship wasn’t the exciting environment for the children she’d thought it would be. Janna clearly needed something more.
If she told authorities, she’d be arrested. Then who would care for her children? And they would have to return little Olvar to the people that beat him. And the betrothal was legal so Janna couldn’t get betrothed to another...they would have to renounce the contract when they became of age, but Olvar would be unavailable on Pilori.
“Mom, Olvar is tired. Can he sleep in my room?”
“Yes, I’ll get cushions.”
It was a little early for Janna to go to sleep, but she had had an eventful day, too. Aerria made a bed from chair cushions.
“Elodi will stay in here with you tonight. Send her to me if you need anything. There is a bathroom right here if you wake and need to use it.”
“All right.” Olvar rubbed his eyes and she helped him onto his stomach. She rubbed a cream into his skin, glad to see that much of the bruising had lightened. He was asleep by the time she was done, and Janna had heavy eyes. Aerria sat on her daughter’s bed for a while, stroking her hair and trying not to worry.
“Am I in trouble, Mom?”
“Well, we will have to talk about this, and I’m going to make some changes. This was so dangerous. If something had malfunctioned on the flitter, you and Olvar could have died. So I am thinking of some things. You will lose some privileges for a while.”
By the time Blevin arrived Aerria was a wreck.
“Blevin, you need to see this right now.” She took him to Janna’s room with Janna asleep in her bed and Olvar asleep on the cushions. He rushed back to the living room.
“Who is that? That kid has Piloran hair!”
“He is Piloran. His name is Olvar.”
“How did he get here?” Blevin at fourteen towered over her but he looked at her with huge eyes and flopped into the chair.
“Janna took the Doodle Bug. That is the boy she was studying for her interstellar class project.”
“She kidnapped him?”
“Well, technically, she rescued him. He was abused. His poor little back is covered in bruises from a beating.”
“And she just went and got him?”
“Yes. Plus it gets worse—”
“How could it possibly get worse? It is a violation of the First Statute!”
“I know, I know. But while they were on the Doodle Bug they recited betrothal vows and put on the bracelets. They were in Free Space. The contract is binding.”
Blevin banged his head on the desk.
“I just don’t know what to do. Except talk to Domingo. Would you go get him? I don’t want to register anything on the ship’s com log.”
Blevin leaped up, brown hair flopping into his eyes. “Yeah. No records. I’ll get him. He’ll help us.” Blevin said as he left.
Or arrest me.
Chapter 2
Domingo opened his door with a frown. No one knocked on the ship, everyone pinged, using their personal coms. To his surprise, Blevin stood at the door, bouncing on the balls of his feet, face stressed.
“Please come with me. I can’t tell you why until we get to my pod.”
“Of course.” Domingo grabbed his sight appliance, put it on, and joined the boy in the walkway. “Do we need to get a medic?” Domingo asked the agitated boy at his side. “Is someone hurt?”
“No! Well, yes, but Mom fixed it. No more talking! I told you I couldn’t say anything until we are in our pod.”
“All right, calm down.”
They arrived at Aerria’s pod. Aerria, her brown curls hanging to her shoulders, was dressed in a relaxed mauve suit, the type that went in a little at the waist and flared over the hips, showcasing all her glorious curves.
“Domingo. Thanks for coming.”
They had shared one kiss, on Blevin’s birthday. They had barely spoken two words to each other since. Domingo ran a sweaty hand through his close cropped hair.
“Oh, come on. But be quiet or you will wake them up.” Scowling, Blevin led him to one of the bedrooms. Turquoise and yellow walls. Janna’s room. Blevin pointed to the floor.
A small child with the striped hair of a Piloran slept on a bed of cushions.
Domingo drew in a sharp breath as he realized what a Piloran child meant. He strode out of the room.
“How?” He hissed. “Are you insane? First Statute Regulations—”
“Janna flew the Doodle Bug. All the positions were right, it was luck she could even get there using the auto-navigator. She saw the child being beaten and went to save him.”
He stumbled to the couch and fell on it with a bounce. “Your eight year old took the flitter?”
“Yes.”
“It didn’t have a security measure to keep her from flying it?”
“No! Who thinks their eight-year-old can fly a flitter, land on a planet and return to the Fair Discovery? Who would ever expect that?”
Blevin cleared his throat. “Well, she watched me program it lots of times. And I took her for those short flights.” Blevin got his flitter license on his birthday.
“There’s more,” Aerria said. She explained about the betrothal.
“Free Space?”
“Yes. So the betrothal holds.”
Domingo groaned. The bracelet would not be removed until the betrothal was revoked when the children were of age or if one died. Or they married. “God’s, you should have destroyed those antiques.”
“They were in Travis’ family for generations.”
“I know.”
“We can’t send him back to abusers. His name is Olvar and he is the same age as Janna.”
Domingo closed his eyes and counted to ten. “We’ll sleep on this. Tell no one. Blevin, seriously, no one, unless you want your mom to end up in prison. I’ll do some research. Don’t you do any com searches. I have security to keep my computer activity private, yours can be traced.”
Aerria nodded and he sent a pointed glance at Blevin, who also nodded.
“We’ll talk tomorrow. Blevin, stay home from tutoring tomorrow so your mother can meet me and make plans. Can you come to my pod right after breakfast?” He asked Aerria.
“Yes.” Aerria looked like she might faint. Or maybe kiss him hard if Blevin wasn’t here.
“Not a word. To anyone.”
He fled.
Aerria left her pod after an early breakfast. She didn’t know how earl
y Domingo ate, but normally Blevin was out the door by 0730. Today though, he was wearing pajamas in the lounge watching vids with the little ones. She’d messaged the tutor he was ill. Janna and Olvar were awake but sleepy, so the two were on the couches with blankets and stuffed toys. Elodi was in the lounge with them, and all communications were to go through her.
Few people were about in the residential area since shift change wasn’t for another hour or so. She’d never been to Domingo’s place. Of course not. There was no reason for her to visit him. They were childhood friends, but they weren’t close now. He’d been her late husband’s best friend, not hers. For a number of years she’d heard from him occasionally, brief messages, until he’d alerted her to the position she now held on the Fair Discovery.
Domingo opened the door, his black hair still damp from a shower, dark eyes glowering at her. He was wearing a short sleeved tunic which showed bulging biceps in his arms. Muscles she wanted to feel under her hands, gliding over that golden brown flesh. By the set of his jaw, she knew he was still furious. “Do you know how complicated this is going to be?”
That set her off. “Look, I didn’t expect or anticipate that anything like this could happen. Would you have? Janna’s eight years old. And a lot of it was luck! Timing! She didn’t calculate a date, she just aimed the ship and the timing was right.”
She shoved past him and he grabbed her arms. And then his mouth was on hers, not like the gentle kiss that turned heated they had shared in the past, but a hard, hot press of tongue and teeth. Their tongues battled, revving her heart rate ever higher. Aerria threaded her hands into his wiry hair, not gentle, and he hoisted her up against the door, but she refused to break the kiss.
This was better than yelling at each other. So much better. She moved her arms to his neck and flung her legs about his hips, letting his weight press her against the door keep her in line for the kiss.
The kiss ended abruptly. Domingo reared back and she slid to the floor, her upper arms again gripped tight in his large hands. He scowled at her.
Something snapped. She had dreamt about that damn kiss they shared almost daily. Aerria wrestled free and grabbed his hand. “We are getting this out of our system. There is just too much going on to be distracted by sex.”
He dragged in a breath but followed her as she pulled him to his small bedroom. Once there, she yanked off her tunic. Domingo stood, eyes wide and dark.
“Well?” She didn’t even feel embarrassed. How odd, half nude with a man for the first time in years and her thoughts were all about how he needed to hurry and undress.
He pulled off his tunic. The shoulder appliances that turned into body armor gleamed in the overhead light. “You want me to take the appliances off?” His hand indicated a shoulder pad.
“No.”
The rest of his clothes landed on the floor and hers did the same. He wore the cyborg shoulder appliances that made body armor and forearm appliances she knew were weapons. She didn’t know he had a thigh implant because she had never seen him undressed before. The shiny silver metal contrasted with his warm brown skin tone. He was hard everywhere, muscles rippling, and a thick erection standing proud. Perfect.
He grabbed her, they tumbled onto his bed, Domingo over her. “Remember, this was your idea.”
“Don’t see you objecting.” She wrapped her legs and arms around him.
Domingo sat at the com, pulling up data he had assembled for their planning session while Aerria used his compact bathroom.
She unbalanced him. He never knew where he stood with her. He had assumed she didn’t care for him personally, though there was some level of friendship. He had been her husband’s best friend. They had been captured together during the war, transformed into cyborgs together, escapees together. And there it had ended because Travis died of a failsafe that Domingo was able to have removed just in time to survive.
His legs were still weak from the sex.
Aerria entered the room, dressed in a plain blue-grey tunic and leggings, ordinary clothes worn by a hundred women on the ship, but on her it seemed alluring, cupping her breasts, the neckline showing the silky skin of her collar bone...Domingo forced himself to turn to his comboard. “Come see what I have here.”
“There is no way around it.” Domingo looked at the action plan before them on the com. “We have to file a marriage contract if we want the six week family emergency leave at the same time.”
Domingo had no family contacts in his employment file, and had used all his annual leave time. “And getting the forged ID papers will take time since we’ll have to file them with Mercia for Olvar to have Mercian citizenship, so we need those weeks.”
Their plan was to take emergency leave to gain custody of an orphan, the child of a Mercian relative, stranded on the independent planet Jiang. Outside the jurisdiction of the Terran Alliance, Jiang was known as a place where everything was for sale. ID papers and a translator chip could be bought.
Aerria sighed. “It seems I require more and more of you. I think this is too much to ask.”
“Aerria, you can’t go alone. The hair change, a translation chip, and forged papers from organized criminals, not the safest people to work with. And Jiang, you can’t go there alone with a child. High crime, no planet wide security force. We’ll be lucky if we can get all this done in six weeks.”
She rested her head on her arms. “Faking an identity is so illegal. But what else can we do? Jiang is our best option. Best for Olvar.”
“Best for all concerned. You being sentenced to Galactic prison helps no one,” Domingo said.
“If we are married and something goes wrong, you would be guardian of my kids.”
“Put it in the marriage contract. We fill out the marriage contract do our contractual signatures, and file it today. Once it shows that were married in the employment database we can request Emergency Family Leave.”
It took eight hours for the marriage contract to be recorded but only three hours to get the Emergency Family Leave. Aerria gathered the children together the next morning. “We are leaving tomorrow morning for Jiang. We will be gone about six weeks but when we come back everyone will think Olvar’s parents were from Mercia but he was orphaned on Jiang. His father and Domingo were cousins, so Domingo will get custody. Oh, and Domingo and I are now married. To get the Family Emergency Leave.”
Jenna jumped up and down. “Yes!”
Olvar just stared at her, unsmiling. “Does this mean I stay with you?”
Aerria pulled him into a hug. “Yes, Olvar, you'll stay with us. You are part of our family now.”
Even Blevin smiled. “Six weeks on Jiang. I never expected to ever visit there.”
“It is a huge city and I'm sure we can find some places to visit things to see that will be very educational.”
“So is Domingo our new dad?” Janna asked.
Blevin raised his eyebrows.
Aerria had anticipated questions about the marriage. “We never thought about getting married but it was the only way to get leave at the same time, to take care of Olvar. Domingo is also your guardian, if something were to happen to me, he would take care of you. But I can’t say he is your father. That is something that will have to work out in time. I do know he has always cared about you.”
Blevin shrugged. “Domingo is all right. He tutors us in Tech class.” He headed to his room. “I'm going to do some research on Jiang.”
Chapter 3
The next day, early in the morning before shift change, Aerria took Olvar to Domingo's pod wrapped in a blanket with a knit cap over his striped hair. Then a couple hours later, when the walkways were full, she, Blevin and Janna walked to his apartment with Elodie running the luggage float. Domingo’s small ship could be reached from his pod and he flew it to a hauler that was headed to Gilead Hub. Docked on the hauler, they traveled to Gilead Hub. After one night on the hub they queued up for the correct jump gate to Jiang, and arrived at the spaceport several hours later.
The spaceport at Jiang was so enormous the planet beyond it could not even be seen. After they exited to the space dock proper with Elodi directing a luggage float, Domingo locked their personal docking bay since they were not taking the flitter down to the planet at this time.
“When we disembark into the city we will stick together. Blevin, you will hold either Olvar’s or Janna’s hand, and I am not joking. This is a huge, strange city not known for its lawfulness. It can be very dangerous. We will take no chances of anyone getting separated,”Aerria said.
“However, if you do get separated, I programmed all of your wrist coms and you have one common call key now.” He showed them the call key, making sure Olvar understood, since he was unfamiliar with his new wrist com. “Elodi and I can track you with my cyborg appliances.”
The spaceport was crowded with all kinds of people from all different planets and cultures, military men in uniforms, robed figures, men and women carrying exotic weapons or tools. Occasionally they saw a family group like their own moving quietly and carefully through the crowds.
A taxi flew them over the city to their hotel, a large square building. On the inside it was actually quite luxurious and their rooms had locks with very high security.
“Tomorrow we will get Olvar’s hair color changed and look for an apartment. After that we can look for some tourist destinations.”
The next morning they took a transport out of the Center City into a more suburban area. “We figured we'd find a hairdresser off the beaten path,” Aerria said.
The place they chose was called Purple Curls and the entire interior was purple. Blevin made a gagging sound, which made Domingo grin. Aerria went to the receptionist.
“I have a somewhat sensitive situation concerning a child and I was hoping I could speak to a hair stylist in private.”
Romancing the Stars: 8 Short Stories of Galactic Romance and Adventure Page 10