Well, that shocked the hell out of her. “What?”
“We acted a lot harsher than we realized or intended. We were,” he coughed, “turned down four more times before Dr. Stevens applied for the program. Dr. Graymard broke protocol and showed me playbacks of our aborted sim sessions before we had our pairing session with Dr. Stevens.” He blushed again, leaving Emi to wonder if this was a sim. “He told me we, in his exact words, acted like ‘fucking assholes’. That if we didn’t loosen up a little, we’d end up partnered with our right hands.”
Ford laughed so hard he fell back on the crate he was sitting on. “Holy crap, I think I’m dreaming. Rob Elloy admitted he fucked up!”
Aaron smirked. “Well, then I guess the twins and I also owe you and your guys a thank you.”
Elloy nodded. Emi tried to sense the other captain’s feelings again. She focused on his brown eyes, a different shade than Aaron’s. Although now Emi knew Graymard had stacked the deck in her men’s favor by introducing her to two crews totally off the charts in how incompatible they were with her, she also knew Elloy and his crew were good men and dedicated to their duties and mission.
And they were, apparently, now also deeply dedicated to Emi’s best friend.
* * * *
Their orders arrived an hour later. Emi and the twins gathered on the bridge behind Aaron at the command console as they read over his shoulder. They would leave as soon as the Braynow Gaston had time to refuel, conduct maintenance, and load their supplies. Priority mission. If the settlers needed to be evacuated, they would be brought to the DSMC’s complex on Ganymede. The population of Jupiter’s moon, smaller than the Martian bases, was comprised mostly of ISNC and DSMC employees.
Aaron reached up and patted Emi’s hand. “We’ll go to the UP complex tomorrow. There’s regular transports all day.”
She nervously cuddled between her men that night. Long after they’d fallen asleep, she lay awake in Ford’s arms, her mind racing. She should be beyond this, especially after the men’s reassurances that Kelsey’s family would welcome her.
Come Martian dawn, she’d barely slept. The men acted unusually quiet throughout breakfast and during their walk through the docking sector to where they would catch a transport to another complex.
Ford carried a small thermal bag over his shoulder, but she didn’t ask the contents and he didn’t volunteer them. She sensed from all three of them it was something they normally did when on Mars, part of their ritual, part of their healing.
Two hours later, they stepped out of the transport into the UP complex. This part reminded her of the sim. She saw signs for the tram station where she and Ford had traveled to the agri-complex. As they walked toward a different tram station, Aaron’s thumb gently stroked her hand, his nervous gesture. One she hadn’t felt…well, since their sim time.
She sent her mind out and felt some of his old sadness, tempered in part by his current love for her.
They debarked from the tram at a memorial complex, a large dome encompassing several thousand acres of parkland. It was also a cemetery. A discrete and tastefully decorated booth at the entrance provided small locator beacons no larger than a thumb drive. Ford took the lead here and pressed a button to activate a display screen. Then he scrolled through a list of names and pressed another button before inserting the beacon into a small slot below the screen. The beacon briefly glowed blue, and then a low beep indicated the process was complete. He withdrew it and turned toward the path.
As they followed, Ford in the lead, Caph laced his fingers through Emi’s free hand. Aaron still held her other.
Caph leaned in and murmured, “They change the park all the time. Plus the plants grow, so it makes it look different.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything as they followed Ford down the winding path. Very peaceful, it reminded her of Earth in many ways, down to the sounds of birds, the breeze, and softly bubbling water.
A flurry of wings exploded in a tree next to them, startling her. Two cardinals took off from their perch on the branch of an oak tree and flew away.
Okay, so the bird songs weren’t piped in.
After fifteen minutes the beacon glowed in Ford’s hand. They spotted a corresponding glow twenty yards off the path, in a gently sloping area that overlooked a small pond.
Ford slipped the beacon into his pocket. They followed him to the source of the glow, which disappeared as they approached. As they gathered around where it had been, Emi spotted a small, clear crystal geode nestled in the grass. The source, no doubt.
Now that she paid attention, she noticed several of the crystal geodes scattered around. Unless you were right on top of one, they were nearly impossible to see from a distance.
Aaron slipped his arm around her shoulders as Ford unzipped the bag and broke out a thermal carafe and four small cups. He poured the servings. “Mint tea,” he explained, handing Emi one.
“Her favorite,” Caph whispered. When she looked, his green eyes glistened, tears rolling down his cheeks. Emi reached over and patted his large thigh. He laced his fingers through hers again and squeezed.
His big size housed an even larger heart. More fragile than her other two men in many ways, Caph’s physique incongruously concealed his gentle and sensitive soul.
The men held up their cups in a toast. Emi did the same.
Ford spoke first, his blue eyes full of sadness despite the happy memory he spoke of. “That first morning after we all got together,” he softly said, “when you called us ‘your boys.’ I knew I loved you then, Kels. I fucking miss the hell out of you, girl.” He took a sip of his tea and looked at Caph.
Caph looked down. Emi’s heart broke over the pain she felt keening through him. “That night in the bar when that woman hit on me and you threatened to kick her ass if she didn’t leave me the hell alone. You called me your husband even though we weren’t really married.” He took a sip of his tea.
Emi looked at Aaron. His brown eyes had darkened in his pain. As they closed, he whispered, “You told me thank you for loving you and told me how much you loved me and Ford and Caph before I lost you.” His hand trembled slightly as he took a sip.
Then he squeezed Emi’s hand, and all the men looked at her expectantly.
“Go ahead, sweetie,” Ford softly encouraged. “It’s okay. Feel free to say anything.”
She wasn’t sure what to say. After a moment of consideration, she said, “Thank you for loving them and showing them how good they could be together. I promise I’ll love them as much as you did and take good care of them.” She took a sip.
They all held their cups up again. Aaron’s voice sounded rough. “Crew first,” he said.
They all repeated it, then finished their tea. Without speaking again, Ford collected their cups. He carefully poured what little remained in the carafe onto the grass around the crystal geode. Then he kissed the tip of his hand and touched his fingers to the geode. Caph, then Aaron, repeated the gesture before they stood and walked to the entrance without speaking.
Ford returned the beacon to the booth. Outside the dome’s entrance, the men took turns tightly hugging Emi.
“Thank you, babe,” Ford said. “That was great.”
Caph concurred. “She would have liked you,” he said as he hugged her.
Aaron held her for a long moment as she felt him trying to pull his emotions back into their highly protected place in his soul. “Thank you for loving us, Em,” he whispered in her ear. “I can’t begin to tell you how much.”
She offered him a smile. “Hey, I’m the lucky one.” She hooked her arms through Caph and Aaron’s as they followed Ford back to the tram depot.
* * * *
They didn’t return to the main depot. They took another series of trams to the far side of the base, where the residential area was located. Markkus and Delaney D’ambroise still worked for the terraforming division of the DSMC. Emi felt herself trying to contain her nerves as they approached their housing pod. Ironic,
because the men had relaxed and even looked forward to seeing the D’ambroises again, their usual playful banter returning as their moods lightened.
Ford pressed the doorbell. A moment later the door slid open. Emi felt another wave of sadness, this time her own. This woman was about the age her own grandmothers would have been, had they still been alive. Kelsey had received her hazel eyes from her mother. Emi also suspected the soft, natural grey color had once been the same dark blonde of her daughter’s hair.
Delaney D’ambroise’s face lit up when she spotted the men. “My boys!” The short, slim woman immediately engulfed Ford, who stood closest to the door, in a huge hug.
Emi felt nothing but joy from the woman.
“Caph!” She laughed as he picked her up when he hugged her.
“Hi, Mom,” he said.
After he set her on her feet, she patted him on the arm and turned to Aaron, who also got a hug. Then she offered Emi a smile. “You must be Emilia.”
“Please, call me Emi.”
Delaney also had a hug for her. “Would you please call me Mom? The boys do.”
Times like this, Emi loved her empathic skills. Her own nervousness finally slipped away as she felt the woman’s genuinely warm reception. “Thank you, Mom. I’d like that.”
“Well, come on in! Mark is in the kitchen.” She led them inside. Emi glanced around at the small but tidy and warmly decorated space. Earth tones for sure, autumn colors of orange, gold, and red interspersed with bright greens and light blues reminiscent of spring and early summer days. Over the main vid screen in their living room, a large picture hung on the wall. It was the same picture Ford had shown her the afternoon in the sim when he told her their “crew story,” Kels in the front, the three men standing behind her, taken in happier days.
There were other pictures of their daughter with any combination of the men and alone in her childhood.
Their only child.
Markkus stood as tall and beefy as his wife was short and willowy. Black hair liberally sprinkled with grey, wrinkles creased the corners of his grey eyes.
Whatever he had cooking smelled fantastic.
“Ribs,” Delaney offered, noticing Emi’s reaction.
Caph broke into a wide, beaming grin. “Damn, Mom! You remembered!”
“Gotta feed our big guy right,” Markkus teased.
Emi found it easy to call the couple Mom and Dad. The conversation flowed, catching up at first, current events on both sides, the couple getting to know Emi, and everyone relaxing. As dinner progressed at a leisurely pace, they started talking about Kels in better days, happy memories that had the men laughing, her parents smiling, and Emi feeling like part of the family, being brought into the fold as they shared those things.
The men offered to help Markkus clean up the kitchen. “I don’t do dishes,” Delaney teased. “I hate cooking, always did. Hate cleaning up even more. I do all the other stuff he hates to do. I think it’s a fair trade,” she said with a laugh.
When the women sat alone in the living room, Delaney leaned over and patted Emi on the knee. “You’re good for them. They haven’t been this happy in…” Her face clouded. “A long time. Since then.”
Then Emi realized something she’d missed earlier. “You’re an empath, too, aren’t you?”
Delaney smiled. “Yep. A trained class one. I worried about those boys. Especially Aaron there at the start. We almost lost him.” She sat back and picked at her fingernails. “I worried about Caph, that if they lost Aaron, Ford would have to have him medicated and put in restraints. I don’t know how Ford didn’t lose his mind. Bless his heart, his plate was full. I always worried if he had time to grieve properly because he was so busy with the others.”
Emi glanced into the kitchen. The men laughed, smiled, and joked with Markkus. “He’s a lot stronger than he looks. They all are.”
“Last time we saw them was when they picked up the Tamora Bight.” She looked sad and shook her head. “Poor Aaron. No matter how much we all tried to reassure him, he couldn’t forgive himself for losing Kels, even that many years later.” She took a deep breath, then smiled. “I can’t tell you how glad I am they met you. In many ways, the old Aaron is back. I can sense it. And he’s really, truly happy again, in a way the twins couldn’t heal him.”
Emi looked into the kitchen again when she heard Aaron’s deep, rumbling laugh.
“That’s a good sound,” Delaney said. “I wondered if we’d ever hear it again. For the longest time, I never thought we would.”
“It’s a very good sound,” Emi agreed.
Chapter Six
Emi eagerly sat in front of the bridge view ports and watched as the Braynow Gaston slowly rolled into the hangar bay on top of several large hover lifts. Once the Braynow Gaston had been positioned and secured, Emi raced out of their ship and down the gangway to wait at the airlock while the docking crew completed the connections.
As soon as the all clear tone sounded, the dockside gangway doors opened. A moment later, the ship’s hatch opened. Donna raced down the gangway and slammed into Emi with an excited squeal.
As the women hugged, Emi was aware of the Kendall Kant’s crew joining them outside the gangway. After Donna stepped away from Emi, she threw her arms around Captain Elloy and planted a long, lingering kiss on his lips. First Officer Sam Johnson next received a hug and kiss, as did Mate Gregor Davis.
The men barely resembled the stiffly starched, regulation-bound military grunts Emi had first met in the sim.
Elloy smiled as he left his arm draped around Donna’s waist. “Dinner tonight, our treat,” he told Emi. “Please join us, you and the guys.”
“What about us?” Captain John Tarrence of the Braynow Gaston joked as he appeared in the gangway. He carried several large bags, as did his First Officer, Alex Parisi, and the mate, Jules Green.
Emi silently snickered. Donna never was a light packer. Emi wondered how many crates in the Braynow Gaston’s cargo hold belonged to her.
The men of the Braynow Gaston handed the bags off to the K-2 crew. “Of course you guys can tag along,” Elloy joked. “You brought our missing crew member to us. We owe you.”
Parisi snorted. “You thank us now. You should see how much crap she brought with her.”
Emi finally laughed. “That sounds like the girl I went to school with.”
“Oh, come on, it’s stuff I need,” Donna groused. “Not like I can pop out to the store any time I run out of my favorite shampoo or eyeliner.”
Elloy kissed her again. “You don’t need makeup.”
“You say that now, but you have no clue.”
They finalized dinner arrangements. Emi waved off Donna’s invitation for Emi to join them while she got settled in on the K-2.
“No, I think your guys have plans for you,” she teased.
“Got that right,” Parisi mumbled as he shouldered one of the duffel bags. His eyes had never left Donna since he spotted her, his unbridled passion hitting Emi’s empathic senses in strong waves that made her want to return to the Tamora Bight and drag her own men into bed.
Emi grinned as she returned to her ship. Donna would be doing a lot of things that afternoon. After all that time spent away from her men, however, unpacking probably wasn’t one of them.
* * * *
When they gathered at the restaurant later that evening, Donna sported a love bite on her neck that hadn’t been there upon her arrival at the station. Emi noticed all three of the K-2 men appeared more relaxed than they had before.
Emi arched an eyebrow at her friend as they stood in the lobby and waited for their table to open.
“What?” Donna asked, snuggling closer to Gregor Davis, her arm hooked through his. “They missed me!”
Caph snorted with laughter. “I bet they missed you two or three times worth each this afternoon.”
Donna grinned while Gregor’s face turned red. “Maybe even more than that,” she teased. Emi laughed. Donna had no problems dishing
it out, her ball-busting attitude a perfect complement for the K-2 crew. A Beta-ranked healer, her rating not as high as Emi’s own Alpha ranking, but still a respectable achievement and nothing to sneeze at. Apparently she’d used the journey from Earth to bone up on the region they were traveling to and had compiled all available reports and information on the colony.
“They’re a huge agriform group,” she explained to everyone at the table once they were seated. “They didn’t have to terraform the planet, but they have done a lot of genetic crop engineering. It’s been an active colony for four Earth years, and they’re slated to go online in three years as a far-space permanent base for the ISNC and DSMC to use as a jump point for more distant explorations.”
Emi scrolled through some of the information in the hand-held reader Donna had taken from her purse. “No idea what their problem is?”
“No. The transmission cut off before it finished. They declared a class C-3 medical emergency. That means something widespread, of unknown origin, and potentially fatal. They asked for research and medical support, as well as security support.”
“Security?” Aaron asked. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” Donna took the hand-held back as their waitress appeared to take their order. “It’ll take a four-week jump to get there. I’m hoping the DSMC can send us more info before we jump.”
Once their jump drive engines kicked in, the jump couldn’t be stopped or changed until they reached their destination, and they couldn’t receive outside communications from the DSMC. Because of their ships’ configurations, they would execute a tandem jump, joined together by tractor beams, which meant they could still have ship-to-ship communications between them.
The security request explained why several crates of weapons had been added to their cargo manifests, as well as an emergency retrofit adding large, powerful long-distance plasma cannons to all three ships. The docking crews currently working on their vessels would finish just hours before their planned departure late the next day.
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