by Kelly Jensen
A squeeze bottle of water was pushed in front of him. Bram grabbed it and pointed the nozzle at the back of his throat. The liquid inside was so cool it hurt. He forced himself to swallow—choking would just cause more pain.
“Did you hear back from SamXYWhatever?” Maia asked, sitting down again.
“For fuck’s sake, is nothing private?” he rasped. “Orfeo’s all up in my business about what I’ve got in my crack, and you want to know where I’m sticking it.”
“That has got to be the single most unfortunate sentence you have ever uttered Abraham Bauer.”
“I haven’t found anything worth Muedini’s attention.”
“In your crack or in your inbox?”
“Crevasse. I live in Henderson Crevasse.”
Maia grinned. “You’re funny when you’re half tilted.”
“Heh.” Bram waved her away from the table. “Go on. I want to read the rest of my mail.”
“Honey, there’s nothing in your inbox I ain’t seen.”
He needed to stop reading his mail at the bar. The connection was so much better in town, though. More satellite time, and Alkirak Orbital was just overhead somewhere, out beyond what would one day be a stable and functional atmosphere.
Maia nudged the squeeze bottle closer. “So let’s find you someone else.”
“It’s probably a waste of time.”
With a burning certainty—the burning being the whiskey, the certainty all his own—Bram knew he wasn’t going to find what he wanted on Alkirak: A reason to add those extra rooms to his living quarters. The possibility of a family. Children. He wanted to share his life with another man. Someone quiet like him. Someone who wanted the same things. But what did he have to offer beyond a small, almost nonexistent income, a modest home, and his not-so-modest affection?
“Noah’s cute. You, though? You’re the genuine article, Bram. For every single person who answered his ad, we’d find ten if you advertised,” Maia said.
Ten candidates he wouldn’t have a chance to vet before they made contact of any sort.
“Don’t you have some work to do?” Bram asked.
“Your order is packed.” She gestured toward his terminal. “Show me who else you got your eye on.”
Scowling, Bram pushed his finger through the minimized heart icon. So SamXY hadn’t been the one. There were millions of men interested in companion contracts. When he’d first learned about the service, he’d been skeptical. Pay a virtual stranger to travel halfway across the galaxy to live with him on the off chance they might fall in love and live happily ever after? But he’d signed up, and outside of the profiles with weird sexual preferences, there were a lot of regular folk who wanted just that. Historically, it wasn’t that odd a concept, either. People had been ordering partners of one variety or another for centuries.
“Now he’s a looker,” Maia said.
Hmm. Dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. At first glimpse, he was attractive. All angles and a gorgeous smile. Ignoring Maia’s presence, Bram tapped the picture and the image faded, replaced by an HV of the prospective companion introducing himself.
Bram watched, not really listening—taking in the breadth of the man’s shoulders and how he moved his hands when he talked. But when he tried to imagine skin and nakedness and sex, the fact the guy was still talking popped his nascent fantasy.
“Talks too much,” he muttered, accessing the next profile.
“That’s what they’re supposed to do in the introductory video.”
“I don’t need to know what he wants to do with every minute of every day.”
The guy in the next HV wasn’t as attractive as the first, but there was a cheeky invitation in his expression that made Bram take notice. His entire recording seemed to be him describing his ideal lover, which was something of a turnoff and a turn-on.
Maia swiped the display, closing the video. “I don’t think he’s right for you.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re looking for more than sex.”
“I don’t think—”
Another profile opened, and Bram forgot what he was going to say. His heart fluttered, and his blood began trickling south. His stomach even stopped burning. Dark curls, large dark eyes, and golden-ochre skin tinged a dusky rose at lips and cheeks. The man’s nose was slightly crooked, but still somehow delicate. Probably too small, but anything stronger would overpower his face. He had high cheekbones, and Bram could see the shell of one ear through those gorgeous, tumbled curls. A modest ear, the top curve of it tantalizing. He could imagine resting his lips there, breathing or whispering. The young man’s body beneath his, hot breath against his neck.
“I think we found a keeper!” Maia was smiling. Bram moved to pinch the display closed, but she blocked his hand. “And just uploaded yesterday. You’ll want to act fast. A face like that will get a thousand offers.”
Bram shrugged, knowing his expression gave away his total lack of nonchalance. Then, thankfully, the doors hissed open, disgorging a crew of off-shift miners. Maia glanced over her shoulder, grumbled, and turned back. “Don’t suppose you’re gonna wait until I get them settled before watching that video.”
“Nope.”
She pushed away from the table with a scowl. “Remember not to send him any pictures of the surface. This is one ugly-ass planet. Show him your farm. Your green terraces. Your windmills. And you! He’ll want to see what you look like.”
“I ain’t going to show him anything just yet.”
Maia left, Bram tapped the profile picture, and Gael Sonnen said hello. Bram watched the HV to the end and then scrolled it back to the beginning, entranced. The way Gael managed to stutter over the word hello. The quiet pauses as he considered everything after that. The shy way he regarded the camera. His smile—small at first, as though he’d rather be anywhere but in front of an HV recorder. When he started to talk about wanting to see the sun, his expression changed and the naked hope in his eyes plucked at something deep within Bram’s torso. Not his heart. Something more fundamental than that.
He closed the profile.
Opened it.
Watched the HV.
Then he got down to the business of checking tags and flags and preferences. Of seeing whether sending a note would be a worthwhile endeavor or a shot in the dark. The listed tags were few and simple, indicating they’d be well matched. Bram watched the HV again.
“H-ell-o. Er, hi. Um . . .”
That nebulous feeling behind his heart thrummed, louder the longer he watched, until his entire body vibrated with a feeling he couldn’t identify. Lust, yes. He wanted this man. Could taste his sweetness and spice. And because more than earnestness seemed to lurk beneath Gael’s dark gaze.
He checked the profile location. A city and planet bearing the same name in the Bhotan system. Zhemosen. Wasn’t that in Commonwealth space? Bram squinted as he calculated the message delay to the center of the galaxy. Some twelve hours, or thereabout. It was a long, long way away. Would a man like Gael Sonnen be willing to come here, to the outer edge of explored space?
Bram pulled up the message window and started typing.
Aboard the freightliner Lennox
Gael tried to pull his hand away from the rifle stock, but the metal seemed to cling to his palm, warm and buzzing. A whimper rose in his throat as his finger tangled with the trigger guard. The window across the alleyway blurred and shifted to reveal his brother, and Loic was staring at him with an apologetic expression. “Hurts, Gael. Hurts,” he said, over and over.
Dark curls clung to one side of Loic’s face and his head was shaped oddly. Dented, sort of flat. Blood seeped across his forehead, mingling with sweat and grime.
The targeting buzz tickled Gael’s palm again. A high, tight whine edged past his lips. His finger was stuck. The gun hitched back in his hand, firing. Inside his head, a wail rose as he tried and failed to pull his finger out. The rifle continued to shudder, shot after shot echoing in the place whe
re his yells should be. Across the alley, Loic’s head came apart in green-tinged horror.
Screaming, Gael jerked forward and fell. Pain exploded across his forehead and a flare of white light obscured images of blood and brain. He reached for his head, fingers groping madly along his hairline, tangling in curls instead of trigger guards. A vision of brain matter flickered across the white space behind his closed lids as he continued probing. He found no broken pieces, no squishy pieces, no holes, no blood. Just sweat and an egg-shaped lump in the center of his forehead.
He’d been dreaming again.
Reality slowly replaced the nightmare. He was in the observation lounge aboard the freightliner Lennox with a shiny new ID chip and a completely legitimate travel voucher. He must have rolled off a bench and hit his head on one of the restraint hooks.
Light. He needed light.
Gael crawled over to the holo viewer controls and keyed them on. His request was met with a quiet tone and the message: “The Lennox is currently in transition. What would you like to view?”
He already knew not to ask for Alkirak. The Lennox database had no visual data on the remote planet, only a sparse Galactipedia entry. His thoughts were too scattered to fiddle with any number of words. He wanted something to look at.
“Show me the Bhotan system.”
The ceiling and walls flickered once before fading behind an outside view of his home system. Zhemosen was the third of five planets. He’d learned that here, in this lounge, and he’d seen his first glimpse of it from space—the impossibly blue marble dotted with strings of clouds and islands, replicated now in holo form.
Four weeks into his journey across the stars, he still had a hard time marrying his view of the City Without End with the pretty planet spinning over his head. He’d seen holos and pictures of the beaches, the oceans and the islands, but all he’d ever known was the undercity. Dark streets, bitter air, and water that tasted like sweat. Sometimes it seemed impossible that they were all on the same planet.
Gael sat on the bench and leaned back against the wall. His heart rate had calmed, but his hands still tingled and his head hurt. He didn’t dream every time he slept, but often enough that he’d developed a schedule whereby he stayed awake for as long as he could before passing out in a convenient corner, hopefully exhausted enough to sleep.
A bed would have been nice, but privacy had proven a valuable commodity aboard the crowded freightliner. Traded, it could buy you almost anything. Gael had given up his bunk for most of the trip, dividing his sporadic sleep between a cubby in a pressurized storage hold and this tiny, rarely used observation deck. In exchange, he had credits to spend on sending and receiving light-speed mail packets, including holo transmissions.
The bonus had been access to the Lennox’s vast onboard public data libraries. He’d learned more about the galaxy over the past month than he had in his short lifetime. It was humbling in an unpleasant way to realize how little he’d known. It was also amazing. The galaxy was amazing. And he was heading out there to—
A short tone echoed inside the observation lounge, preceding a ship-wide message. “The Lennox will be leaving transition in five minutes. All passengers should proceed to quarters or the nearest lounge.”
Instructions for crew followed. Gael was already on his feet. He could stay here; the benches in the observation lounge were equipped with light transition harnesses. Unfortunately, the room was not equipped with something to catch his vomit, and he only had one change of clothes, which he’d like to save for tomorrow.
Thank the burning sun there was only one more day of this—and that this drop into real space was only for refueling purposes. A visit to port would have him hiding in the storage hold again. He hated it down there, and not only because he always got the creeping sensation that he wasn’t the only person tucked into a dark corner. Since leaving the undercity, he seemed to have developed a phobia of tight spaces. But if a warrant officer had his description, even his new name wouldn’t save him.
Gael palmed the door release, stepped out into the corridor, and followed his mental map to the nearest bathroom. The two-minute warning sounded just as he slid through the door. He didn’t bother with the lock. If someone wanted to burst in on him strapped to the commode while he vomited in the sink, they were quite welcome.
Everyone else on the ship was probably in more pleasant circumstances.
Gael got the light restraint over his shoulders and flopped back against the dull-gray wall behind him to wait. A last tone sounded and the ship lurched. Gael’s stomach rebelled, and he leaned over the sink.
Later, after washing out his mouth, Gael inspected the lump on his head in the mirror. It was already purpling around the edges. He was going to meet Abraham Bauer with a dark bruise in the middle of his forehead.
Terrific.
The cheap plastic Band on his wrist vibrated softly, indicating an incoming message. The thrill of having his own Band had yet to fade, even though the model Price had gifted him with did little more than carry his new ID chip and enough credits to get him from Zhemosen to Alkirak—or point Z to A, as Price had delightedly pointed out several times. The Band also had limited comms access. He couldn’t send or receive from it, but he could get alerts.
Gael hurried to the comms lounge to access his mail.
He had four hours until the ship reentered transition. He’d watched a couple HVs on how travel across the galaxy was accomplished and retained one simple image—that of a pebble skipping across a stream, with each touchdown being a visit to real space, the arcs in between being jumps through folded reality. His stomach cramped at the idea of reality folding.
Two decks down, he touched the door panel to the comms lounge and slipped inside. Another passenger was taking advantage of the lull between transitions to access their mail. Everyone else was probably eating. Eating in transition was weird. So was using the bathroom.
Gael slid behind an empty console and keyed his Band to display the new message. It was from Bram. Taking a breath, Gael held it against the odd sensation that traveled through his internal organs every time he opened a message from the man who had offered him a contract out of Hell. Then he pressed Play, and an image filled the small, personal screen. Bram had eyes that might be blue or brown—it was hard to tell in the holo—and dark-blond hair cut very short, framing a face that was all pleasing angles: a wide brow, defined cheekbones, a strong nose, and a square jaw. As always, Gael felt his lips quirk up into a small smile. He liked the way Bram looked. He liked it a lot.
Posting an HV at Heart Companions had been like being a contestant on some ridiculous gameshow. Price had told him to have fun with it. Gael had had to restrain the urge to delete his profile once people had started responding:
A woman had wanted to add him to her harem.
Fifteen separate invitations to contract with Booyah Companions—a service that would not have matched him with a single lonely colonist.
Dick pics, tit shots, and combinations of both.
One respondent had had six breasts. And tentacles.
Twenty hours after the nightmare had begun (or had taken a bizarre left turn), he’d received a polite, concise message from Abraham Bauer. In his first HV, Bram appeared as nervous as Gael, stuttering over hello in almost exactly the same place—which probably wasn’t hard to do, but kind of endearing? And his voice. Really good face, but it had been his voice that had ultimately won Gael over. His accent was soft and mellow, as though he had all the time in the universe to consider his words and shaped each one specifically before using it.
During the week in which they’d negotiated contract terms, Gael had become fond of his voice.
Bram began this latest message with a firm “Hey” followed by the expected pause. “I figure you must be about a day out,” he continued. “If you’re anything like me, you’ll be glad to have solid ground under your feet again. Hope the transitions haven’t been too rough. I’ll have to tell you about the time our ice
harvester got caught in transition and we all thought we might end up in some alternate reality.”
Bram smiled and the tightness in Gael’s chest eased a little, even while his stomach knotted furiously over the mention of alternate realities. If the Lennox got stuck in transition, he’d ask for a suicide pill. Better to know his end.
“So, I haven’t planned a whole lot.” Bram scratched the side of his face in a gesture that was already becoming familiar. “I reckoned we’d just, ah, see what you wanted to do. There isn’t much to see here yet, of course. My farm. Some sights along the way there. It’s quiet out here, but I get the idea you’re looking forward to that.”
A flush of guilt burned Gael’s insides. Was he using this man, this seemingly nice, unassuming, and apparently lonely farmer? Bram’s short missives had been such welcome respite from the horror following his botched job. Every day had been an exercise in patience, waiting for a message from Bram while hiding and trying to avoid the nightmares where he shot his brother, the girl, or opened doors only to find Julius Trass screaming on the other side.
Sitting here now, he almost felt as though he’d won the grand prize in that stupid gameshow.
“So, anyway,” Bram went on, “this is just a short one. I . . . I’m looking forward to meeting you. I guess I hope you’re of a similar mind. But, hey, life is what it is and, well, I want you to know that I’m a fair man. We’ll see how this works, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I hope you don’t mind me sayin’ I hope it does.”
Pink tinged Bram’s cheeks and he ducked his head, obviously embarrassed. He muttered something and ended the connection. He must have decided afterward to leave that last part in before sending the HV on to Gael’s comm address—which was sweet and interesting.
Gael watched the short message again, not so much listening to the words as watching Bram’s face. Absorbing his presence. The breadth of his shoulders showed Bram’s physical strength. He was a large man, but had a gentle way about him. He moved like he spoke, slowly and methodically. He seemed really nice.
