“Good,” he said, then swiftly marched for the door. He flung it open, then suddenly halted and said “Fuck!” Then he swung back to face me. “When I said you’re to stay here, I meant here in the base, not here in this particular room. But at the same time, do not go wandering around by yourself. Wait for someone to escort you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” With that, the door slammed shut and I heard my master yelling for someone called‘Henderson’, and then a flurry of booted feet pounding up and down the hallway.
After a minute or two, the noise faded out, and I took a deep breath and tried to get my body to relax. That was not the way I’d expected my first meeting with my master to go. On first impressions, he’d seemed far from the brutish tyrant I’d been expecting. But anyone could pretend to be nice for five minutes. His anger at the phone call, and then his abrupt departure, told me more about his true nature. I was his dimari. I had just bonded to him and I would have followed any order he gave me without argument. And yet he’d run off and left me here, apparently having decided I would be more of a hinderance than a help.
But he’d already said he would be taking Kade, his other dimari, with him. Was I just a spare then, a backup for less important tasks?
Or perhaps he was just abandoning me, as I’d already predicted he would.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JAI
Some time later – at a guess, I would have said it was about ten minutes – the door opened again, and that same yellow and black lady came in. Now that I was able to think clearly, I took the time to wonder what species she was. I’d never seen anything quite like her before, and I assumed she must be one of the seven species in this huge alliance they had. The Denzogal Alliance was not the only alliance in the galaxy by any means, but it was one of the most successful. I’d been given a meagre education on it largely because the Alliance did only a minimal amount of trade with the Eumadians, and so there had been little point in learning all the details of their lives.
“Hi there,” the lady said, smiling at me. “My name’s Soka. Sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier, but I was told you were in stasis, so you wouldn’t have understood who I was. I do a lot of the work for employee health and safety here at the Hon base. Commander Hill told me he had to leave to attend to some urgent business, so he asked me to keep an eye on you until he gets back.”Keep an eye on me?Like I was a toddler in need of entertainment?
“I’ll start with taking you on a tour of the base. You’ll be spending quite a bit of time here, so it’s as well that you know your way around. And then, depending on the time, we might get some lunch before Aiden gets back.”
None of that defied any direct orders my master had given me. He hadn’t explicitly given me permission to eat lunch, but he hadn’t forbidden it either. And he’d said I could walk around so long as I had someone with me. I stood up, following Soka out the door.
“I’m not sure how much of your orientation Aiden managed to get through before he had to leave,” she chatted, as we walked down a long, wide hallway. “I’m sure he’ll fill you in on the rest later, but did you have any immediate questions you’d like me to answer?”
“What species are you?” I asked, immediately taking advantage of the invitation. But then I regretted my abrupt words. “I’m sorry, I’m not very familiar with the Alliance,” I clarified, hoping to soften that first impression of me. As much as I was bristling about being bonded then tossed aside, none of that was Soka’s fault. And perhaps making a few tentative allies around here would be a good idea in the long run?
Soka beamed at me, not seeming to take any offence. “I’m a Wasop. And the very tall folk with the fur are Denzogals,” she added, pointing to a couple of soldiers nearby. “The people with the purple skin are Solofs. And the shorter ones with four legs are Derelians. We’ve also got Culrads and Sedgegeds as part of the Alliance, but we don’t currently have any of those in the military. I’m sure you’ll meet some around the city, once Aiden takes you home.”
There was that word again. Home. How much of a home could it be with a master who saw me as a throw-away extra?
“So this wing here is the administration wing,” Soka said, gesturing to the rooms around us. “Meeting rooms, conferencerooms, plenty of consoles for people to work on reports or filling in forms. This is the military,” she added, rolling her eyes in a good-humoured way. “There’s amultitudeof forms. Then over in this direction, we have the armoury, gym and shooting ranges. I can’t take you in there because you don’t have clearance yet, but I’m sure Aiden will get that sorted out for you fairly quickly. Let’s go and take a look at the transporter bays, then I’ll show you where the cafeteria is. That’s always a good one to keep in mind.”
She prattled on as we wandered in a large circle, occasionally ducking out of the way of someone in a hurry to get somewhere. She was interrupted now and then by someone shouting, or by an announcement over the loud speaker, but that was nothing out of the ordinary for a military base. As part of my training, I’d spent several months on a Eumadian military base, and while some of the specifics were different, I could easily grasp the overall order and structure of this place.
But as we went, I was also paying attention to the soldiers around me. Because I was not just a combat specialist. I’d also been trained as an erotic companion. With a specific purpose in catering to groups. I’d spent a great deal of time during my training wondering how those two things could possibly fit together, and I’d only ever been able to come up with one idea that made any sense. If I was going to be spending a large amount of time on a military base, there were going to be a large number of men – and quite possibly women as well – who would want to relieve their stress by fucking whatever hapless fool was forced to stand still for long enough.
So this was to be my fate. I took note of the private nooks as we wandered, the shadowy corners where someone might be pulled aside for a quick tryst. I was tall and strong, but the Denzogals towered over me, and I felt a wave of ice trickle through me as I thought about being pinned up against a wall byone of them. But strength alone wasn’t the only thing that could control me. Even the much smaller Wasops could easily force me to comply, so long as my master had ordered me to obey them. As much as I might have enjoyed finding minor ways to annoy my master, no dimari could refuse a direct order.
“This here is the barracks,” Soka said, some time later, as we rounded the corner into another section of the base. “You can ask for clean uniforms, blankets, toothpaste or whatever at the desk.” She indicated a wide desk with a Derelian lady perched on a stood behind it. I glanced down at my clothes. My master hadn’t yet given me any instructions about my clothing, so I was still wearing the standard grey pants and t-shirt that the dimari wore all through our training. I had a very sturdy pair of black leather boots on my feet, which had been given to me just before I’d been put into stasis and packed into the crate, and I’d assumed at the time that it was because I was likely to need to do a lot of walking – or possibly running – soon after arriving at my destination.
“You know what? We may as well get you sorted out with a uniform now,” Soka went on. “That’ll save Aiden time messing about with it later. Come over here… Sonya? Hi sweety, this is Jai,” she said to the Derelian behind the counter. “He’s Commander Hill’s new dimari. I was hoping to get him set up with a uniform while the Commander’s busy.”
Sonya looked up, seeming surprised by the request. “Oh! Oh, he’s got a new one, does he? But Kade’s still around, isn’t he? Nothing’s happened to him, has it?”
“No, no, Kade’s perfectly fine,” Soka replied. Well, that confirmed my earlier theory – my master did indeed already have a dimari. So I was his second. His spare.
“Oh, is this about that crate that fell out of the-” Sonya started saying, but Soka hastily hushed her.
“No, no, we don’t talk about that,” she cut her off, and Sonya’s eyes opened wider.
“Oh, sorry. I’ll keep my mouth shut then. But yes, let’s get a uniform sorted out. Hold still a moment and I’ll take a scan of you.”
She pointed her comm at me and I stood still as it sent a wide beam of light down over my entire body. I wondered, as I waited for the scan to finish, just how stupid these people believed I was. There was something about my master’s purchase of me that I wasn’t supposed to know. A something that was apparently common knowledge around here already. I felt a prickling sensation down my spine.
“Looks like you’re a size fifty-eight,” Sonya said. “Wait here and I’ll go grab you a kit.”
She climbed down off the stool and hurried off, and I took the opportunity to have a closer look at her. Derelians were only about a metre tall, with four legs and two arms. Their lower bodies were furry, while their torsos looked much like a human torso, though a fair bit smaller. Their four legs were long, compared to their overall body size, and Sonya moved with loose, easy steps.
“Don’t underestimate them,” Soka told me, giving me a gentle nudge. “They might be small, but they can run bloody fast when they want to. And Derelians have the best aim of any soldier in the Alliance.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, embarrassed at having been caught staring.
