“I don’t know,” Alred said, his form flickering consistently now. “There’s something about when I see her. Something that just… I don’t know. My kind, they still mate. But they only ever mate with each other. The mated undroitts never change, never grow in number. When we became technical beings, that bond transferred with us, and it continues to stay steady even with each new recall. Those of us without mates have just accepted that we will never get that bond. I never thought… I’ve never looked at a person as a real option before this. I still don’t know if… I think I just want to be around her. I just want to observe her. To see what she does. For now, that’s enough.”
How strange.
Not the fact that the undroitt recalls still had their mates. As far as Tanin knew, the fact that they still formed mate bonds with each other, even though they were fully non-biological, was one of the reasons the Coalition agreed that they kept their personhood status.
It was the fact that Alred was so many years old, his recall restarted again and again a dozen times over through those years, and he’d never once been attracted to someone in any way, much less physically. Most undroitt recalls gave up their gender entirely, because there was no point in keeping it when, for thousands of years, it was completely irrelevant. The fact that Alred kept his made him stranger than most of his kind.
To then be attracted to someone, in whatever way he was experiencing it right now, was just odd. But not something Tanin saw any reason to discourage.
His males were looking to him to lead them into the future. All of them were seeing what he did with Garnet, how she reacted to him, how they reacted to each other, as a milestone for what they might have for themselves.
And as much as Tanin believed Garnet should do better than him, he also believed that his males deserved the chance to find their mates. To fall in love. Maybe have some younglings. To really live the free life he promised them.
And that started with him.
Alred was completely right. In this, Tanin had to lead.
“I don’t know how to court a female,” he said at last, admitting to something that, honestly, was the least of the things holding him back.
Alred’s form finally stabilized and he chuckled weakly. “I don’t either. But it is something we can figure out together. I’ve been researching humans and what they need. You know, since I’m superior to you squishy flesh creatures who can only focus on one thing at a time.”
“Careful. You’re currently falling for one of us squishy flesh creatures.”
“Yes. Another problem for me to ponder with my superior brainpower. For now, would you like to see what I’ve learned about humans?”
Tanin hesitated for a moment before saying simply, “Yes. I would. Show me.”
Chapter 22
Garnet
The next station on the bunny trail they were hopping towards Hir-Fallow – their ultimate destination – was called Rin-Kal. It was also they were delivering that statuette they picked up on Hon-Kal. There were no pirate attacks or anything on the way, making her wonder why they’d paid extra for Tanin to transport it. When she asked him, he told her that some people were just like that. They saw the extra security, saw the higher cost, and assumed that they needed it, even if they really didn’t. And Tanin wasn’t the type to turn down money that others were offering.
He was a savvy businessman, not a generous one.
Rin-Kal was a pretty standard space station. It orbited around what Tanin called free floating space junk. It was a hunk of rock that was just cruising mindlessly through space, not connected to any sun or solar system. But it was full of precious minerals, so it hosted a pretty extensive mining colony.
And that mining colony was connected to Rin-Kal. That meant that Rin-Kal serviced all the miners and their families as well as the ships that passed through. It wasn’t just a shopping hub like Hon-Kal; it had restaurants, businesses, parks, entertainment areas. It was a full-blown city in the shape of a long rectangle. One big boulevard with businesses, homes, and smaller side streets all branching off of it. The ships that came by docked on one side, while the other side was connected through tunnels to the mining business and quarters – a secondary building that looked more like a series of intersecting cubes that was right next to Rin-Kal. They looked like one and the same building at first, but Tanin told her that they were, in fact, two different things. Like two different cities abutting each other.
Sway and Alred were dealing with port costs and connecting to the docking bay as Tanin gave the package over to Rok down in stowage. Everyone had gathered there. Not for the package. Rok would be making the delivery on his own. Rin-Kal was a pretty middle-class station, and as such, it wasn’t so dangerous that he’d need the twins to tail him. Especially since the box was going to the male who owned the mining colony, and he lived in the best part of the station.
Rok was the largest male on the ship. An absolute behemoth who made the box with the statuette look like a little thing of candy in two of his four big hands. He cradled the package to his chest with his upper arms, his lower ones still free to interact and protect himself.
Everyone else was there because, aside from Sway and Alred, they were all going onto the station. Not for business though. It was a chance to get off the ship and get some station leave. The others still had to sell the gems they’d stolen from Gissrn, and this was as good a place to offload some as any. After Rok delivered his package, he was also free to do as he wished. They didn’t have to be back on the ship for a day or two since the generators needed time to recharge anyway.
Vytln was even there. Garnet only ever saw him if he was making his way between his workroom and bedroom – and even that was rare. He spent most of his time in his workroom. Like Sway, he had to put in a lot of hours to keep the Humility running. But since the ship was just floating, set to auto-adjust to the station as needed, something Alred could do on his own – he could have the time off as well.
Garnet looked around at everyone curiously. At the different personalities and pasts and skills of the people all gathered in that one room. They were an eclectic bunch. And looking at them just standing around together was kind of weird.
They weren’t joking around with each other. They weren’t jostling or horse playing like she expected a group of guy friends to do. There was distinct space between each of them. A carefully maintained distance that was at once polite and, somehow, also very intimate.
Because as close as theyweren’t, there was still a strange level of comfort to it. Sorbet and Tebros were the only two near enough to touch each other, but the others all maintained that careful distance. But it wasn’t one made of weariness or distrust. If anything, it was the opposite.
She had seen how Tanin and Trove and the twins acted when they were out in a station. When they were around people they didn’t know. That distance was not only bigger, but it was more tense. There was a stiffness to their bodies, a sharpness to their gaze, as they kept track of everything around them. They had to be on guard because they couldn’t trust anyone.
But here, when it was just them chilling around, getting ready to debark, that tension was gone. They weren’t cautious, they weren’t stiff. One of them would move, and the others didn’t immediately dart their gaze to him and stare. They just all stood there, comfortable in their distance.
As strange as it might seem, thiswastheir closeness. This was absolute proof of how much they trusted each other. They might not play and joke around like normal guy friends, but they weren’t normal guys. This sense of calm ease was probably the highest form of intimacy they were capable of.
