“Maybe we can concentrate on just one panel and get it to slide open.”
“That’s worth a try.”
She grabbed the edge of her door again. I put my palms against the exposed edge and prepared to push it into the wall. “On three. One ... two ... three!”
We strained against the panel like Atlas holding up the Earth. At first I didn’t think it would relent, but then it began to reluctantly give way. Bit by bit, it slid into the wall.
I shoved and Candy pulled until we couldn’t anymore. We stopped, gasping for air and eyeing the widened opening we’d made.
“Can we fit?” I wondered.
“Let’s try,” Candy said. She stepped into the opening and started to worm her way through. She did a lot of grunting and cursing as she worked to slide through the door.
“Too much ass and boobies,” I remarked as I watched her fight her way out of our cell.
“Are you saying my ass is big?” she said with a mock snarl. She popped out on the other side and gave a breathless cheer. “Okay, Ms. Broad-beam. Bring your wide load on through.”
“Hallelujah,” I said. I shoved my way out too, and we whooped our success.
The noise we made brought curious Nobeks to the doors of other training rooms. They peered at us with confusion that changed to appreciation when they realized it was a couple of women making all the racket.
Waving grandly to them like she was royalty, Candy started walking down the hall that led back to the main concourse of the station. “Work hard, boys. Give Trainer Stidmun our regards.”
I followed after her, laughing as I imagined the Nobek’s face when he saw we’d escaped. A minute later, I didn’t have to imagine.
We were almost out of the promenade, just inches from the door that would take us to the umbilical passage that led to the Pussy ‘Porter when Oses’ familiar call stopped us in our tracks. “Shalia. Candy.”
We turned to see our weapons commander a few feet away, walking towards us. Stud Man was right beside him.
The expression I’d imagined he’d wear? Not nearly as stunned as the look on his face for real. I almost couldn’t stop myself from laughing, but I managed not to. Some small bit of self-preservation told me humor at Stud Man’s expense might not go over too well.
“Hi Oses,” I answered as he and Stud neared. “I guess you heard we got into some trouble.”
“I also was told you’d been sequestered in a locked room awaiting your punishment,” he answered. He looked at Stud Man, his brow crooked upward.
“The punishment was expected. The waiting part was a bit much. I need to get back to Anrel,” I answered breezily. I gave Stud Man a cold stare. “I warned you not to keep me from my child. Now you have a broken door to deal with.”
Candy chimed in, giving her would-be beau her sweetest smile. “Yeah, we did a little bit of destruction. Have fun with that.”
Stidmun looked at us and then turned to our weapons commander in obvious confusion. Oses wiped the smirk off his face just in time to avoid his fellow Nobek seeing it.
“Question, Nobek Stidmun?” he asked in a dry tone.
“Well, they did go in a restricted area—” the trainer started.
“Yes, and may I say, Shalia and Candy, how very disappointed I am in you for getting caught,” Oses told us. “I thought I trained you better than that. Shameful, shameful. You certainly did deserve punishment.”
Now I was really having a hard time not laughing. Oses sounded like a disappointed dad whose kid had given him a bad report card.
“However you did manage to escape a locked room. It’s a skill any first-year Nobek could accomplish, but as we have not yet covered that in our exercises, I must commend you for figuring it out for yourselves. It will offset the mistake you made. You are dismissed to the ship.”
With that, Oses bowed to Stud Man. Before the confused commander could return the gesture of respect, Oses turned around and headed for one of the drinking areas.
Candy and I were officially off the hook. The rush of relief I felt told me just how worried I had been. I gave my friend a grin as we started towards the ship.
“Um, Matara Candy?” Stud Man’s uncertain voice followed after us.
We both turned back. I noted how blasé Candy’s expression was as she faced the man she’d gotten us into so much trouble over. “Yes?”
“I thought maybe, if we could put this episode behind us, if you’d consider ... well, you know I was doing my job and ... you said you’d like to get to know me...” His voice died off as the right words refused to come.
“I’ll let you know,” Candy said, her tone unconcerned. I saw how her eyes gleamed.
She’d hooked the handsome man her heart – or whatever body part it was – had set itself on. She’d reel Stud Man in when she was ready.
September 9
We are leaving the space station. On to our next stop: Haven Colony. The Pussy ‘Porter is still a mess, and Rel didn’t have everything it needed to safely finish its journey.
Based on Betra’s suggestion, I mentioned to Katrina it might be worth having her clanning ceremony during our layover on Haven. She considered the idea.
“It’s either that or Kalquor,” she said. “I wanted to check Haven out anyway. That way, I can make a recommendation to my daughter on whether or not she should push Matthew to settle there.”
“If he brings his family into Empire space, you’ve got a better chance of getting him to accept your choices,” I mused.
“That’s the idea. I’ll take a look at what Haven has to offer before we get there and see what my clan says about it.”
“Make up your mind soon,” I advised. “If this ceremony is happening on Haven, we need to pull it together fast. We’re only days away.”
Katrina sighed. “I know. Tell me again why I’m doing this to myself? Why I’m not simply happy with Wotref filing the paperwork and calling it good?”
I gave her a hug. “Because it’s a big deal and you should celebrate. Besides, Candy will never let you hear the end of it if you don’t have an actual ceremony.”
Candy’s got her own love story going on. She and Stud Man hit it off once she relented and let him take her out. Every moment he wasn’t training the troops, he spent with her. Now she’s starry-eyed.
It’s all Stidmun, Stidmun, Stidmun. She can’t talk about anything else except for the occasional word about Katrina’s upcoming ceremony.
I smell trouble heading her way. There had been easy affection for her lovers Mihi and Ama, but this is something different. Because I worried about her, I tried to talk some sense into her yesterday during dinner. We sat in the station’s mess hall, waiting for Stud Man’s glorious appearance.
“Ah, Candy? Is he clanned?”
“No,” she said, her gaze faraway as she twirled a lock of hair around one finger. “He’s been concentrating on his career and isn’t even sure he wants a Dramok and Imdiko.”
“So ... he’s not in the market for a Matara.”
“There haven’t been any for him to shop for,” she grinned. “But here come us Earther girls, so his chances are vastly improved.”
“Not if he doesn’t get himself clanned,” I pointed out.
“Hmm.” Candy didn’t seem worried about the matter. “I suppose that’s true if he wanted to make something official.”
My suspicions grew. “You’re going to Kalquor to find a clan.”
“I guess.” Her look darkened for a moment. “I have plenty of time for that. Two years. There’s no rush.” Her eyes glazed over again and a slight smile touched her lips.
It was pretty obvious to me this wasn’t a mere attraction on Candy’s part. I’d made jokes about love at first sight before, but it’s starting to not be funny. Cupid’s arrow found a target right on my friend’s heart.
Adding to the drama is that Stud Man seems every bit as smitten. His face lights up when he walks into a room where Candy is. When they’re together, his gaze barely
leaves her face. He hangs on her every word.
Heaven help those two if they are that gone over each other. I know it’s not impossible for them to have a relationship, but there are hurdles to it. All I can do is wish them luck. They do make a pretty pair.
Something a little closer to home is weighing on me. I hate to borrow trouble, but no one has heard anything about Nang in some time. I’m sent into a panic every time there’s a sighting, but not having any idea about where that man is feels worse somehow. I’ve started looking up some admittedly paranoid things, like how to escape hover cuffs, stasis fields, and containment fields. Then I think how crazy that sounds. Would he really go that far?
I can’t live in fear. But I have to be ready for anything.
Maybe Nobek Jaon has news for me. I’m due to com Clan Aslada anyway, or at least Meyso. With us almost to Kalquor, we need to plan for my mother’s procedures.
So much to do and get ready for. The days are starting to fly by like minutes now.
I had the pleasure of talking to all of Clan Aslada. I do not use the term ‘pleasure’ as a euphemism either. It was a very real delight, because they spoke to me from their whirlpool. The men were having a nice soak. Their wet, glistening torsos were above the churning water, looking all muscled, manly yummy. I think I stammered over my hellos, but I don’t remember the early part of the conversation too clearly. Whew.
I finally recovered my senses to ask Jaon if he’d heard anything about Nang. No was the answer. Jaon didn’t seem too worried about it.
“He’ll turn up if he doesn’t get himself killed out there,” the Nobek told me. “The route from Earth to the Empire is still pretty lawless, especially for a lone Kalquorian. The fact Nang doesn’t want to be found by us puts him in greater danger of crossing paths with our enemies. We may have heard the last of Dramok Nang.”
I bit my lip over Jaon’s cavalier attitude. He was probably right to be confident. Heaven knew my ship had run into more than its share of problems even with the protection of destroyers and fighters. What chance did Nang have out there all alone?
I also kind of felt ill over the idea of something awful happening to Nang. He turned out to be a mess, but we did once share something. As scared as he makes me feel, I didn’t want anything truly bad to happen to him. I just want to see him shoved in a nice padded cell until he gets his senses back.
I shoved aside all of that to smile at the delicious vision of Meyso. “So what do we need to discuss about my mom?”
He smiled, making my heart flip-flop. Who can resist a man who looks good and intelligent too? And is sitting half-naked right in front of you, carved muscles begging to be touched? Yow.
“The first thing we need to take care isn’t medical at all. You need to establish an affidavit of legal guardianship over Matara Eve. That will clear the way for you to make decisions on her behalf.”
I stopped admiring his gorgeous body to think about what he’d said. “I thought I already had that.”
“Informally, yes. The doctors who saw Eve on Earth deferred to you on a temporary basis due to the history you gave them and their observations of her behavior. That was backed up by the tests Dr. Nayun ran.”
“I have to make it formal?” I squirmed a little at that. Mom would be enraged if the dementia allowed her to understand I would be making all the decisions for her. Major decisions, as in letting Meyso play in her gray matter. Yeah, that would not go over well.
“Once on Kalquor, yes. You have to assume legal guardianship over your mother in order to sign off on the procedures, which are medicinal and surgical.”
Aslada added his input, his modulated voice smooth as silk. “It’s simple enough. I’ll have my lawyer draw up the papers. You sign off on them, he attaches the medical evidence of your mother’s inability to make decisions on her own behalf, and sends it in to the judge who will give his approval. It will all be done within a day.”
I’d had that power back on Earth. It hadn’t been easy to sign those papers then, robbing my mother of her right to decide her own fate. It didn’t matter that I was doing the right thing to keep her safe. It was still an awful step, facing the fact that my strong-willed mother needed a keeper. Now I had to do it all over again, but this time they would be altering her instead of simply keeping her from hurting herself.
I knew it wasn’t just that Meyso would be treating the dementia that had stolen Mom’s ability to live on her own and make her own decisions. I was also on the brink of having the bipolar disorder that made up her personality remedied at long last. A decision that should have been hers to make ... one she would never go for.
Did I have the right? Was I playing God by taking away her almost-constant anger, the sudden outbursts of maniacal cheer, and the suicidal bouts of depression? It seems like a stupid question, but that was the mother I had known before dementia subverted those qualities, along with her fierce protective instincts when she thought I was threatened. There had been moments so overpowering that she would have to grab me in a fierce hug while telling me over and over how much she loved me.
How much of that would the surgeries take away? Who would Eve Monroe be when the illnesses were erased and she became the person she could have been? Would I even know my own mother when it was all done?
We talked more about the procedures themselves, the recovery time, the rehabilitation that would be involved later. Yet the decisions I had to make kept me from absorbing a lot of that. I even found it difficult to appreciate the men’s gorgeous bodies.
Before, fixing Mom’s problems were all a theory, an event far into the future. Now the time was at hand. When Aslada told me he’d talk to his lawyer that afternoon and to expect the documents to arrive in the next couple of days, my heart went into overdrive. Could I really do it? Should I? And if I do, will she ever forgive me?
As God is my witness, I just don’t know.
September 10
It’s been a big day for Katrina. She and her clan have decided to have their ceremony on the colony of Haven. They’ve apparently built this amazing Temple of Life there, headed up by the Kalquorian governor’s Imdiko. So the priest on board the Pussy ‘Porter is pulling things together with the main priest on Haven.
Katrina came to my quarters with Candy in tow and a bottle of bohut to toast her good fortune. “This isn’t even the really big news,” she said as I found cups to pour our booze into. Anrel was having her nap, so I decided one drink wouldn’t end the universe.
“You’ve got more news?” Candy asked.
“I’m saving that to knock your socks off with in a few minutes. Anyway, my Imdiko is taking care of what will be said in the vows with the priest on board. The priest – oh, what is his name?”
“Imdiko Tineb,” Candy supplied. She sipped her bohut and rolled her eyes in pleasure.
“Right, Tineb. He’ll do a bunch of ‘do you, will you, do you promise’ stuff, which we’ll all answer yes to. It will be quick and painless, thank goodness. This other priest – crap, I’ve forgotten his name too.”
“Your age is showing,” I teased.
“Fuck you, whippersnapper,” Katrina said with a grin. “His name sounds something like ‘rivet’ or ‘ricket’. Anyway, he’s going to decorate the temple. So all I have to do is roll out of bed, put my clothes on, and show up.”
Candy blew a raspberry. She really wanted Katrina to have a big blowout of a ceremony with ribbons and doves and roses covering everything. In short, the exact opposite of what Katrina wanted. “Romance is dead,” she said in a flat monotone. “You’ve killed it.”
“But the sex is still wild,” Katrina informed her. “We’ll have a party afterward too, which this Rivet or Ricket or whatever his name is will take care of the arrangements for. The Kalquorian governor is supplying leshella in honor of the first clanning on Haven. He’s some rich guy, a former councilman or ambassador or some such important dick.”
“Nice!” I exclaimed. “What’s the Earther governor sup
plying?”
“They don’t have one yet. The colony is still getting its legs under it. They’ve only got about twenty Earthers there so far, but with free land and materials to start with, that will change pretty quick.”
“Are you still hoping Matt will go there?” I asked.
Katrina beamed. “I don’t know. But since you brought him up, let me tell you my really big news.”
Candy squealed with excitement. “He’s asked for your forgiveness!”
Katrina snorted. “Not hardly. Matt is still not speaking to me. But he did let my grandchildren com. I got their message this morning.”
That got Candy and me on our feet jumping up and down with joy. Could there have been a better clanning present given to Katrina? I couldn’t imagine it. The happy tears in her eyes spoke volumes about the hope that had been restored to her.
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