by TylerRose.
“There is no try about it, Arran. The new rules will be enforced. Those who don’t like it can seek employment elsewhere. Those who break my rules will be taught why they should not. I’m going to my office. I expect to see each of you there in turn for our private meetings, starting at the top of the coming hour. Sort out the order among yourselves.”
Once in her office, she asked the Admiral if he could send up some general information about the station for her to read. Then she spent time on the computer looking at a uniform company and deciding what styles to use on the station. She picked a two piece outfit with what should be comfortable pants and shirts with sleeves roughly to the elbow. Solid design with colored collar and cuffs.
Orders placed, she went to the window to look out into the vastness.
“Decrease light by fifty percent.”
Less light inside meant she could see outside more clearly.
“Which direction is Earth?” she asked.
“No entry Earth.”
“Which direction is the Celestial Congress?” she asked instead.
The window in front of her showed an image of the galaxy with a flashing light to indicate the location of the Congressional moon.
“Is that the Sol system of Alpha Quadrant?”
“No entry Alpha Quadrant. No entry Sol system.”
“Which direction do I need to look to be looking toward the Congress?” she asked.
“The station would need to rotate twenty degrees for you to look in the direction of the Congress. Do you want to change the orientation of the station?”
“Not at this time,” she replied.
Her intercom beeped.
“Open intercom. Yes?”
“Madam Rose, the Admiral has sent up the materials you requested and Security Chief Arran is here to see you.”
Madam Rose. She didn’t really like that very much.
“Send him in with the materials.”
The door opened and closed.
“Get your own damn reading material.”
“You’re from K’Tran IV, right?” she asked.
“I am.”
“Are you indicative of your species?”
“What’s that mean?” he asked back.
“Are all the people of your planet assholes? Or are you a special breed of asshole?”
“Look at me when you insult me, female.”
“Do I have to fight you or something for you to respect me?” she asked. “Is that how it’s done?”
“Females do not have a position of superiority over males.”
She turned around to scowl at him.
“Welcome to today, Arran. I’m the boss. If you don’t like it, get the fuck off my space station. Tell me something. Did you willingly take part in Solomon’s plan to take me prisoner for the night? A man broke through the line and then several more, allowing him the opportunity to pick me up and teleport me to his room and lock me in. Did you allow it and go along with the game?”
Uncomfortable being so on the spot, he had to remember how he’d felt at the time.
“I was told to allow a man through as a way to convince you that you needed more protecting than I could provide. Nothing more.”
“Ah, so it was a ruse intended to allow a small harm to be done to me. You’re fired. Get off my station.”
She turned around to look out the window again.
“Wait one minute. You know very well that orders given by Speenar were not to be questioned. I registered my distaste for those orders and was told to do it anyway. I had as little choice as any Rolcha you care to name.”
“Why should I believe you?” she asked.
“For the same reason the Rolcha should believe you. It is the truth.”
Staring hard at each other for a good twenty seconds, neither blinking and neither flinching. She waved him away and turned back to the windows.
“I will have a team of three men to escort you as protection.”
“No. They will get in my way more than they will help me,” she denied him.
“Then agree to one man.”
“It’s not needed.”
“The one who thinks it is not needed is the one who needs it the most,” he countered. “I will pick someone who knows how to keep out of the way. Someone who can act more as personal servant than body guard.”
“Fine,” she hissed, growing irritated with him. “Whatever. Just get the fuck out of my office.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
He chuckled. “The one who says nothing is the one with the most things. You weren’t this angry when you were chained by Solomon this morning. You left determined. You returned in a fury so hot I can feel it from across the room. So something happened while you were gone. What is it?”
“Nothing I can discuss with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t!” she thundered at him with eyes like the Raas.
He made a choice to move in closer and touch her arm. She reacted with a punch so fast he barely caught it in time. Blocked, pushed, she pushed back with the intention of putting him on his back. He grabbed her, kicked a foot out to let her fall on top of him. A flip and a pin and she was on her back on the floor under him.
“As I thought. You are spoiling for a fight. What happened?”
“Someone proved to me that I can never trust a word out of his mouth. He let millions of people die and put me here where I couldn’t stop it from happening. I should have been there and he knew it. No one came for me until after it happened and couldn’t be changed or stopped.”
Arran pushed back to sit on his calf, imagining millions of K’Tran killed and himself put someplace he could not intervene.
“That would anger me too,” he agreed.
“Everyone I ever knew was dead when I went back to the Congressional station.”
Only now, a day later and five hundred years removed, could she finally cry out her sorrow. Arran saw that her anger had been the wall holding in her grief. He had brought it down and had to deal with his mess. He moved back enough to help her sit up and did the one thing that was hardest for a K’Tran male to do. He put his arms around a female to comfort her during an emotional outburst.
Trapped in a man’s room, made to have sex with him, kept in cuffs and mental chain and not a single tear did she shed. It took the deaths of millions to reach her, and her outpouring was over far too quickly. She was pushing him away, getting up, a small cloth appearing in her hand to dab at her eyes with.
“Go oversee something,” she said. “Leave me be.”
In the secretarial office, Arran called for a particular man to come and be her shadow. When he arrived, Arran gave him the books from the Admiral as a way to get him into the office without her refusal.
“Give these to her and stay there. When she leaves her office or apartment, you go with her everywhere. Into the toilet. Into the Rolcha rooms. Everywhere. You do not leave her alone for a single second. Everything you hear you are to treat as confidential as if you’d heard it from a Rosaas.”
“Yes, Sir,” Wyche replied, and went in with the heavy manuals. “Where would you like these?”
“On the table,” she said.
He put them there and took a seat near the opposite end.
“Go.”
“Begging your Ma’am’s pardon, but Security Chief Arran has assigned me to be your constant companion and shadow. I go where you go and I promise not to get in your way.”
One was better than three. She let it go, the secretary announcing Vaus.
“The Deek’Trai bankers will be happy to set up a facility for the employees, vendors and store owners on the station. They can be here in three days with a vault that will also include a room of private safe-keeping boxes. The only thing they want to know is do you want thumb print or eye pattern account access?”
“Both and let the people decide which they want to use. Put it on the Administrative level.
I expect them to leave a manager to oversee it, but for the employees to be our own people. Pull from the staff we already have on hand. I expect they’ll need three or four.”
“Are you going to continue to sing two songs an hour? I’ve been asked by several people.”
“I don’t know yet,” she replied. “How is Jeera doing getting the girls settled into their rooms?”
“I don’t know. She doesn’t report to me. I’m the accountant, not personnel. I need an assistant Accountant, with all this going on. I’ve picked Lowell.”
“Fine. How is the cleanup coming?”
“I’m an accountant, Rose. Cleanup is Station Operations.”
She scowled at his reflection in the window as he left. People on this station were very particular about something not being their job. She needed someone all those people would report to, who could tell her all these things at once instead of hearing from one at a time.
Alone with the heavy manuals, she opened one and tried to start reading. Amps and volts and a whole lot of words she didn’t understand. She’d never taken a class in electric systems or engineering. Picking up the books, she teleported to the control room of the generator levels.
“Where is the Admiral?”
“I’m here,” she heard behind her. He was coming out of a room she assumed to be his office.
She put the books down on an empty surface.
“I don’t understand a word of what those books say. Would you please explain to me in plain language, assuming I have zero knowledge of anything you do, how my station runs?”
He took in that request, puzzled by her. “I have known four station owners now, you being the fourth. You are the first to care how it works. The rest just yelled when things didn’t work.”
“I want to understand. I want things to improve, if they can.”
He gave her a pair of earplugs and they went into the noisy generator room to get a closer look. He showed her the diagram and explained how the mechanics inside generated electricity for the entire station. Two generators on, one off, they rotated through the day, all three coming online for the five to seven hours the station was at peak usage.
She thanked him and ported back to her office.
“I cannot protect you if you ditch the one guard I put in place to be out of your way,” Arran scolded her the minute she arrived.
“I told you I didn’t want any,” she replied. “Is everyone behaving? No looting of shops or anything like that?”
“They’re taking the opportunity to eat in restaurants. They never were allowed before. I’m not stopping them.”
“That’s fine.”
With a toss of his head, Arran sent his man out.
“Would it be easier if I took on the job of your security myself?”
“I don’t know. Can you teleport wherever I go with no notice?” she asked back.
“I could figure out a way, I’m sure.”
“If you think you’re man enough for the job, give it a try.”
“Now I think we’re not talking about the same job,” he said. “You were furious before. Now you are subdued. What happened?”
“I cried. I gave myself another task. My head is full of station matters and I’m making decisions. Good night.”
She ported herself to the penthouse and made everyone finish what they were doing. She kicked them all out and locked out all the ways to get in, and set the intruder alarm. Digging through her suitcase, she found the box that contained her movies. As the music could be transferred to the new technology, so too could movies and she’d taken the time during her weeks as secretary to transfer every movie she wanted to take with her, converting from VHS to memory cards.
They weren’t infinite. Each could hold ten movies and she slid through them until she found Star Wars. Slipped into the machine in the bedroom, cued up and paused, she changed her clothes and assembled a tray of snacks and a far too strong a pitcher of Sistarian Gin punch. Curled up in the recliner, she ate and drank watched one movie after another. She smoked her pipe and made notes as she thought of things, wrote in her journal as she thought of other things.
Yoda’s words that hate and anger were paths to the dark side had new meaning today.
“I’m trying,” she said at one point. “I’m trying.”
“There is no try,” came from the screen.
Yoda was right. She’d used that very concept earlier with her rules. She would implement them. She would keep on the side of right. It would be the others who would try. They would try to throw her off. They would try to stop her. While they would be trying, she would be doing.
She would get herself to where she needed to be, n matter what she had to face to get there.
Decisions came outin a rush at the morning meeting, and had each of the department heads taking notes around the table as quickly as they could. They responded to her rapid-fire questions just as quickly. The station would be ready to open the next evening. The clothes had arrived and were housed in a room within the Rolcha area. The uniforms had arrived for restaurant and support staff and would be passed out after the meeting. Each person would get two uniforms. If they wanted more, they had to buy them.
She broke up the meeting to walk the station and see for herself the work in progress. She visited stores to assure them all was well. Going to her apartment, she locked everyone out to watch Empire Strikes Back again…and realized she had become Lando for the time being.
Arran and his man both took up her personal security on opening day. Arran was all out of joint when she got a message that a man was waiting for her on the new Arrivals floor.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Prince Shestna.”
“Send him up here.”
Arran did not like it at all, as she checked her hair in the mirror of the window. Liked it even less when the Voranian came into the office and took her by the hands and kissed them and she smiled so broadly for him.
“How are you?”
“Fine and well taken care of by my Security Chief. They won’t leave me alone for two seconds.”
“Good,” Shestna nodded to the K’Tran male. “That pleases me immensely.”
“Not that she makes it easy,” Arran replied, less annoyed by the new face now he’d proved himself on the same side of the security issue.
“Why is it you coming to see me?” she asked.
“Because you are not angry with me, to be blunt about it. Julian thinks you are still angry with him.”
“No. I’m over it. I believe he had nothing to do with it. It’s Earnol I’m angry with and forever will be. I’m going to be getting ready shortly. We’re opening tonight.”
“How long has the station been closed?” Shestna asked.
“Couple days. Cleanup and stuff.”
“Madam Rose, I am being inundated with questions as to whether or not you will be singing,” came over her intercom.
Madam Rose. She still didn’t like that. She had to come up with something else.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Singing? What’s this?” Shestna asked.
“Horny men turn into rampaging, mindless humphogs when she sings,” Arran said.
“This I must see. Yes, you will sing.” He pointed a waving finger at the intercom. “Tell her yes.”
“No fair ganging up on me like this,” she complained good-naturedly, but gave the answer. “I have to get ready. Meet me in the restaurant in an hour and we’ll have supper.”
An hour exactly and he was watching her cross the restaurant to him, patrons paying her little attention this first night.
“You are very beautiful, you know,” Shestna said as he seated her.
“I have been told. But thank you.”
“How are you sleeping here in this strange place?”
“It’s not that strange, remember? I was here for nearly a week. If I was going to have trouble sleeping, it would have been those first days. I sleep just fine, thanks,” she
said, lighting a cigarette.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
“Smoke? Why?”
“You smell better without smoke,” he replied, and waved over the waitress so they could order.
“Everything is fresh,” Tyler told him. “Our leftovers go to feed the Rolcha and employees at the end of the night, so nothing is left.”
“A good plan.”
She ordered the Sistarian beef tenderloin meal and a pitcher of Sistarian Gin punch, a beverage she’d grown fond of during her first week on the station. Sweet and fruity and not as strong as straight gin, and she poured both glasses full.
“Be careful with that,” Shestna warned her. “It’s an aphrodisiac.”
She laughed and poured her glass full. “I’ll masturbate later.”
“You should take a lover while you’re here.”
“Who? You?”
He smiled. “No. Voranian sex is…shall we say…intense.”
“Intense is good. I’m accustomed to intense.”
“Not this kind of intense. The Voranian female commonly resists and the male must subdue her. Voranian male has a series of small bone-like anchors that grip the entrance to the female’s channel. They force her open as he extends to penetrate, and lock her into place so she cannot throw him off. It is painful for the female. For an Earth woman, it would be agony. It is like having eight simultaneous piercings, the needles remaining in until the male is finished.”
“No, I don’t think I’d like that,” she agreed.
“They can be disengaged, but it will still hurt for some time. The K’Tran who stands your guard would be a fun lover, I’ve no doubt. They are strong. Dominant but surprisingly attentive.”
“You know this first hand?” she teased, getting a dirty look from him.
“I should spank you for that.”
“Rewards for teasing you? Wonderful. I will have to tease you more.”
“So you are truly not disturbed by what Solomon did to you?” he asked.
“Oh, please. I’ve played the sex slave now and then. He didn’t do to me anything that hadn’t already been done before, except for that mental dampener thing. He just didn’t pay me ten grand an hour for it. I took his entire bank account instead.”
