by Viola Grace
She exhaled slowly. “I have over two and a half years before that happens.”
He smiled. “Good. It will give you time to get you used to our ways.”
“Why would I want more lovers?”
“You will crave them. If you have a good friend at work, use him.”
She made a face. “I don’t want to use anyone.”
He smiled. “Want loses strength when need rides you, but you will have to figure out your companions.”
“So, we are done after this?”
His eyes widened. “Of course not. We are bound for life. As much as any Relitans are.”
She was dissatisfied with his answer, and she moved the broken door aside. She headed downstairs to let housekeeping and maintenance know that they needed to get up there and undo the last half hour.
Chapter Seven
She spoke to the front desk, explained about the door, and then headed for the gift shop. Maya did not look behind her as she picked out a dress for the late afternoon. She picked one and a pair of sandals. She paid for it, and when she changed, she sent her bodysuit back to her room. The pay chip in her wrist made shopping naked possible on Relita.
His voice rumbled from behind her as she smoothed the line of the dress a final time in the mirror. “You are pretending that I am not here? That is not something that most folks attempt.”
“I am working on a few other things. Do Relitans ever do stints off-world?”
“No. We are bound to proximity to our queens. We need to be near them.” He wrapped his hands around her waist and bent to press a kiss to her neck. She shivered, and her toes curled.
“Right. Well, I was going to go and see how Heron was doing at his surfing lesson and then figure out a place for dinner.” She leaned against him for a moment and relaxed before she caught the interested looks of the shop clerks, and she sighed and straightened. “Right. We need to get going.”
He grumbled.
She split the difference and curled her arm through his. “So, how did you get Heron to begin with?”
“When it became apparent that despite my excellent genes, no female was going to take me on, my mother offered me a clone. She copied me and had the embryo removed to mature in a tank. While he was maturing, I figured out childcare and worked out a schedule with the guardians. I have emergency minders when I go on a call, and Heron knows how to call them if he needs them.”
She smiled. “He seems to have a knack for taking care of himself.”
Huron laughed. “He does. He has been quite the adventure. None of the other guardians on Relita have children yet, so they are all acting uncles for him. He has no fear of aliens.”
“Yeah, I got that when he wrapped his arm around my neck.” She sighed. “It’s a good thing you went looking for him in the right direction.”
There was an incursion into the base on Caloff. It was non-lethal, but having a bachelorette party invade their sanctum made the guys uneasy.
“Ladies, this is Command Control. While the good guardians have issues about injuring non-combatants, I am not a guardian. I will hit you with every non-lethal weapon that I have at my disposal and have drones return you home. Now, get in your boat, and go home.” She watched the women hesitate; she lifted the stun turrets and took aim at the first of the girls. The blast hit; it spun her around and threw her into her friends.
There were screams, and the girls returned to their vessel as Command Control contacted the local coast watch and had them collected for trespassing on Imperium property.
She spoke to the men on their base and stated, “Command Control, out.”
“What are you doing?”
“What?”
“Your body is putting out static. It is minute, but it is there.”
“It must just be something that I do naturally.” She smiled.
“It is intermittent. Sometimes it is very intense, and other times, you are nearly silent.”
She shrugged, and as they walked to the shoreline, the wind caught her skirts and ruffled them.
“Is it just me, or are there a lot more locals out here right now?”
“It is the start of the weekend. Folks are excited. Summer is nearly here, and the days and nights are warmer.”
They walked through the sand and stood at the water’s edge while Heron and Wave approached on separate surfboards.
Heron looked so serious, and Wave’s expression was protective as the little guy glided in toward the shore.
She let Huron go and catch his son as the board glided toward the shore with Wave giving it a little help.
The other guardian walked up to her and inclined his head. “Hello, Miss. No wonder Huron called me. You are definitely worth a few hours of distraction.”
She looked at him and gave him a smile. “You aren’t.”
He winced. “That is cold.”
“I know, but you are used to cold. You thrive in it.”
He stepped toward her, his deep blue skin with green striping as familiar as his gills. His hair was truly spectacular. It not only hung to his ankles, but it was mobile under the water and had tremendous strength. Above the water, it had the pulling power of a jellyfish. His eyes were solid black, and his ears could fold back against his head.
He was handsome and tremendously strong, but he had hydration issues.
She looked toward Heron, but he was already throwing his arms around her legs. “Hey, little man. You looked great out there.”
“Did you see? Did you see?” He was excited.
“I did see. You were great.”
Heron pressed against her, and then, he smiled. “Are we yours now?”
She blinked. “What?”
“You smell like dad and you together, so I am guessing that we are yours now.”
She crouched and hugged him. “Sort of. You know that your dad has a job to do?”
“Yeah.”
“I have a job to do as well. That means that I won’t be around much. I don’t get much time off.” She stroked his cheek.
“That’s okay. We are yours now. You will be with us when you can.”
“My time off and your dad’s time off might not line up well.”
“Well, you can still come and see me.” He beamed.
Huron let out a rumbling laugh. “She might want to see more of the world first, Heron.”
Heron grabbed her hand, and she stood. “This is my dad’s teammate Argo Helionith. Argo, this is my dad’s queen, Maya. She works here.”
Argo bowed. “It is nice to meet a... friend of Huron’s. How long have you known him?”
“I believe it has been five hours.” She smiled. “I have known Heron for five and a half.”
“Oh, so you made nice with the kid to catch the bigger fish, huh?”
Maya blushed crimson. “N-no. That wasn’t how it was.”
“Sure it wasn’t.” He gave her a cynical look.
“Argo. Stop it.” Huron’s voice was firm.
The two men squared off, and Argo muttered about her being a suit-chaser, and Heron was looking at her concerned.
He stepped between his father and Argo, and he screamed. Argo fell back with his hands on his ears.
It was the wail that Maya had heard earlier. “Hey, little guy. It is fine. It’s okay.”
Argo was wincing, and he looked at her. “You heard that?”
Heron poked him in the chest. “I was crying, and she heard me and came for me. She kept me safe until Dad could come there.”
She stroked Heron’s head, soothing him. “Hey, guy. It is fine. Adults say stupid stuff, and a lot of ladies who are not very nice chase people on teams like your dad and Argo.”
“There is Boran, too, but he is kind of quiet.”
She smiled and nodded. “Got it. Boran.”
“Maybe next time you can meet him. He’s Relitan, too, but he’s unclassified caste.”
“So, what is Ar
go?”
The man scowled as she talked about him but not to him. He didn’t like it any more than she did.
“He’s srenath-Relitan. His people live underwater.”
She nodded, and her running scan caught a distress call.
She hated to break up their party, but she ran the distances and made the call.
“Command Control requesting Wave’s assistance in the Mechar Swirl. A small vessel is caught in the twist. Can you assist?”
Wave stood up, and he said, “Pardon me, I have gotten a call.”
He walked swiftly toward his vessel, and the skimmer was coasting over the waves. She got the reply. “On my way, Command Control.”
She looked at Heron, and he gave a world-weary shrug. “That happens a lot.”
She smiled and continued to feed Wave silent intel as their gathering stowed the surfboards back at the hotel, the staff of which were only too happy to put aside a guardian’s equipment.
“So, do you get tired of being easy to spot?” She asked Huron after they had gone to his vehicle, and Heron had been put into a matching outfit of blue pants and a wrapped shirt in black. Huron refreshed his clothing right there in the lot, and she remembered that public nudity wasn’t as taboo here as it was everywhere else she had ever lived.
She found her hand taken by Heron and the other by his father, and they went for a walk to find somewhere for dinner. Somewhere with a view of the waves and the meteor shower that was going to start when the sun went down.
Heron sat on her side of the bench seating as they looked out at the water. Apparently, his dad took up too much room on the other side.
She grinned as he leaned against her, and it didn’t escape her that she was being surrounded by various castes of Relitan males.
“So, Huron, what is going on here?” She twirled her finger around in a circle to indicate the men who were crowding the restaurant.
He smiled. “You are a queen. They will gather wherever you are. The strongest queen gets the most followers.”
“So, all for the chance of getting some action?”
He grinned. “Pretty much.”
Heron asked, “What’s action?”
Maya blushed. “Uh. Noisy private adult time?” She shrugged.
Huron nodded. “A pretty good assessment.”
“Oh. Like when daddy’s team pretend fights.”
She exhaled. “Right. Just like that only with boys and girls.”
“Boys shouldn’t hit girls.”
“That’s right, and girls shouldn’t hit boys either.” She nodded. “Hitting doesn’t solve anything, but sometimes, when you are up against bad people, it buys you the time to arrest them and hold them responsible for the bad things they have done.”
“And it stops them from doing more bad things at the moment.” Huron nodded.
She bit her lip. “I am sorry. I shouldn’t be talking to your child like this.”
“When you say something that I disagree with, I will let you know.”
Huron asked, “So, Maya, do you have any children on your home world?”
She frowned. “There are children on my home world, but I have never had any of them.”
Huron looked perplexed. “You are so good with him, though.”
“I have met and interacted with children. I started watching my nephews when I was barely older than they were. A child is just an adult in process. They have less vocabulary but rapidly developing cognition. As long as you keep the words precise and scaled for them, they understand the same as a grown-up.”
Heron grinned and was very smug at her description. “What is cognition?”
“The way you understand things. The way your brain moves things from word to thought.”
“Oh.” He smiled, and she knew he was filing the word away for later.
She laughed, and they sat and chatted about Relita, with Heron contributing what he knew about the local parks and fun fairs.
Heron had crawled into her lap, and he fell asleep while the conversation turned to Terra.
“What is your world like?”
“Ah. Well, we didn’t have guardians. No one with talents was allowed to have them on display, and when they started to emerge, they had to pretend to be aliens just so that they could save their own people.”
“So, that is where they got the tech for you.”
“Yeah. I suppose so. Anyway, it was an unpowered place with unpowered people and a few of us with latent skills.” She widened her eyes as she realized how close she was to slipping up with her occupation.
“So, they scraped me up out of the hospital bed, dumped me in a tank, and then started to add things to make me... me.” She gestured to her body.
“Hospital?” He frowned. She had said it in English.
She tried to come up with the Relita equivalent. “Med centre?”
“How badly were you injured?” He scowled and leaned forward.
“Enough. I was lucky. A quarter of the men on that rig didn’t make it.”
“What kind of rig?”
“We still dig for oil. It was pumping oil out of the deposits under the ocean floor. There was a storm, a malfunction, and one of the pumps cracked, which spilled explosive gasses into the rig. One spark and...” she snapped her fingers.
“Oh. How did you make it out?”
She shivered, and Heron stirred. “I am told that the planet’s avatar found me, got me breathing again, and to medical treatment.”
“I am sorry, it is obviously an unpleasant memory.”
“Well, since Heron is listening, I don’t want him having nightmares.” She smiled. “Let’s just say I wasn’t favoured to survive, and when I did, the avatar got me on the next shuttle off-world.”
Heron looked up at her with soft-gold sleepy eyes. “And now, you are here and met Dad and me.”
She chuckled and looked toward the sea to keep from being pinned by both of their gazes. Her mind was silent. There was nothing going on on any of her three worlds that needed guardians.
Argo walked up to them, and he crouched next to them. “May I join you?”
Heron frowned. “Are you going to be polite, Uncle?”
Argo blinked. “Yes. I am. I just saw the gathering and have to concede that she might not be a suit-chaser.”
“And I am willing to consider that you might not be an asshole, but the information is still coming in.” She tapped the table with one finger. “Every. Time. You. Open. Your. Mouth.”
“What do you say we call a truce?”
She inclined her head. “I will if you will. Right?”
He stared at her and slowly nodded. “Right.”
She wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but the meteor shower started, and all the lights along the coast went out. She checked on the alerts, but it was scheduled to stop light pollution for the spectacle above.
The shower concluded, and Heron watched half of it. It was fun to see the coloured streaks moving across the sky, but Maya was ready for bed when Huron took his son and wished her good night outside her hotel room door with a sweet kiss.
It had been one heck of an eventful day.
Chapter Eight
The knock on her door was unexpected. She looked up from her morning meditation and checks, and when the knock sounded again, she walked to the door and checked the screen.
“Why are you here, Argo?”
He was leaning against her door, and he grinned into the camera. “I am here to take you on an ocean trip with the other two. They are getting provisions for the journey.”
“Why didn’t Huron come to get me?”
Argo grinned. “He said if he was going into your room this time, he wasn’t going to come out for hours. So, this was the more effective choice.”
She frowned. “What if you get a call?”
“I am sure you will know before I do.”
A chill ran down her spine. “What do y
ou mean?”
“I recognize speech cadence. Also, Heron said that he kept hearing you talk and referring to yourself as Command Control. Now, will you let me in?”
She swung the door open. “He is a telepath?”
“All of our children are. It stops around age eight.”
She stepped back and went to put on her clothing. She grabbed a bag and stuffed swimwear and a wrap in it. She took the daily-wear bodysuit that she normally had on during her casual hours.
When she emerged, he looked surprised. “Why are you wearing that?”
“My wardrobe is limited, and I only have one dress. Heron and I dumped dessert all over it, so this and a swimsuit is what I have left.”
“Right. We are stopping before we leave. Another queen would laugh her ass off if she saw you.”
She frowned. “I am only out for another day after today. It is doubtful that I will run across another queen.”
He grinned. “Not where we are going.”
She frowned, and he picked up her bag before he took her by the hand and led her out into the hall.
“Where are you taking me?” It sounded very dramatic.
“One of my brothers owns a boutique down the boardwalk. He should just be opening when we get there.”
She muttered. “I wear the suit to cut down on the pheromones.”
“Well, they don’t work on my folk.” He laughed. “Unless you are in the water.”
“What happens if you get a call?”
“I expect that you will know before I do and let me know.”
“Does Huron know?”
“He suspects. How do you do it?”
“It’s just a divided mind.” She shrugged as she was hauled down the pathway to the area filled with boutiques.
He opened a door, and a younger version of Argo was in the shop, staring in surprise. “Alfon, she needs some clothing suitable for a vacation. And an extra swimsuit.”
Alfon looked at her, and his ears flicked. “If this is her fashion sense, I don’t know what I can do.”