I waited around for most of my final hours on the project. I’d stay in the maintenance bay working on personal projects until a foreman tapped me on the shoulder and transported me to a part they just installed and a whole system I’d need to enchant. I could think of a few ways to install them differently, but this is what the plans call for, so I don’t work for half a day, then work for half a day, always on call. I got a lot done for Katie though, and I look forward to her praises.
I don’t hear another word from the Captain or Chiddy during my stay, but at the end of the two weeks, a foreman that I worked with regularly came to talk to me.
“Artisan, we have performed the work and the collectors are online and working, but the aether to bring the Host online will not be available for a few days. If you had purchased the extra power sources, we could have attached them to the auxiliary conduits, but that was not on the parts list.”
Oh? Auxiliary power, eh? “If I had an alternative power source, would your guys help me install it?”
“If it does not impact our finishing a month early, I don’t see why not.” Never seen a rodent shrug before. The fur bunches strangely.
“Alright, I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.” I dash off to the shuttle and waste no time priming my warp rings while putting distance between me and Ship 47. Too bad I don’t have the rig set up on Atropos the moon for growing crystals. I’ll just have to settle on what’s growing in the loft’s lab right now.
I get to the loft and Katie’s in the lounge with only shorts and a tablet on as I rush in to kiss her and whistle at her appreciatively before running downstairs. I have been drawing crystal since I returned, one is just shy of four feet, two at three ish, and two other smaller crystals. If I was in my dream farm, it’d be a dozen ship-sized rigs.
I pull the largest gem and start grinding faces for runes and ask Katie if she has three crystal harnesses lying around. I’m busy grinding and buffing as Katie descends the stairs, having added slippers to her wardrobe, to press some buttons on three of the four fabricators. She wraps her arm around my middle, kisses my cheek and ruffles my hair a little before parking in a chair in the “safe” area of the lab.
The three gems take all afternoon and a bit of evening to prep for the charging apparatus, but a bottle of aether ink and a bathtub full of juice starts the process.
“So now that I’ve printed the harnesses, what are you using those crystals for?”
“The Sector Host needs to collect enough energy to sustain itself. There are extra conduits for auxiliary power, so I figured I’d rig my biggest batteries to support it.”
“Wasn’t one of those supposed to be for me?” Katie asks sternly.
Oh shit, she’s right. “Ugh, besides the big one, what would you like?”
“I’ll take the two that are as long as my forearm. Please make them heat tolerant.” She grabs the back of my hair lightly, as though she’s going for a nice long kiss, but stops short and locks her eyes with mine. “I know you like staying busy, Penny; but you should never forget your promises to me.”
“I’m so sorry baby, I . . .”
She head-butts me lightly, “Don’t be sorry, just don’t do it.” She kisses me softly, “I love you Penny, but I have to be a priority sometimes.”
“I . . . can do better?” I ask, pitifully.
“Yes, you can.” Her stern reply makes me feel like I forgot to pick up the kids from soccer practice. Not having kids, or having done team sports, that is an odd feeling for me.
It feels like a reminder that the gestures that I’m used to giving aren’t fixing the problem. She needs consistent support. Or maybe, it’s a reminder that when this job is done, that she should be a regular feature on my itinerary. I think that one’s on point. Don’t fall into old habits where I’m gone for projects for weeks at a time.
I order a wine and charcuterie board for dinner upstairs and finish hooking up the charging analysis cables to the tub so that it can alarm me if the solution gets too low for charging. I head up stairs to find that Katie has already started on the food. I walk by and squeeze her shoulder on the way to the shower and set it to POWER to rinse my suit, then dial it down and start tossing clothing out of the area.
I’m mid putting conditioner in my hair when I feel hands on my hips and a nibble on my shoulder. “I was trying to eat, Pixie.”
I grin and continue with my hair. “So? Don’t let your Pixie interrupt your meal.”
She growls and bites my shoulder for real “Mmm, tasty Pixie.” She murmurs while sliding her open palm up my body, just to stop at my chin and pull my head aside for batter access.
“Not too much, love, I worked a lot yesterday.”
A drone from her desk comes over with a piece of galaxy fruit and hands it to me. I eat it eagerly and feel a session of euphoria before Katie gives me another. Two hours later I slink away from the bedroom area for a glass of water and to go check on the charging operation. The solution is low, so I make some more, grab a second glass of water and return to my bed-mate handing her the other glass.
“How do they look?” Katie, ever the data-vore.
“Your gems will be finished in a few hours. The large one may not be full when I pull it out.”
Katie doesn’t reply, but pulls me into a spoon situation where she tangles a leg between mine and flops an arm over me to pull me close. “Discussions are better this way.” She breathes into my hair. “I slightly resent the creature you are helping the system turn me into. This creature is needy and hungry, much of which is for you.”
“I do love the new snuggle hungry Katie. But I guess that means I need to be around more for both of us.”
She nods into my hair. “I think I’m losing myself in you again.” Katie confesses.
Only a little fear leaks in from my memories as I realize, “I may not be losing myself, but certainly my independence. I need you for my state of being more than I need to eat. And you know how much I like to eat.”
Her chest shakes my back as she laughs. She hugs me too, realizing “you would eat regardless. You love food too much to stop eating, even if you didn’t need it.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Yeah, which makes you a pretty big deal.” I hug her arm, feeling the tug of sleep in her embrace.
“I don’t know a better time to bring this up, but when we go back to Earth, for a time I will need other partners, Penny, but I will still want your attention. I feel this is why Melissa started to fade. In trying to treat us equally, you neglected us with the same metric.”
“Then you should know, that I absolutely hate the idea of you with other women, heck other people in general. But I know that I can’t keep up with you in an aether-starved environment. It would literally kill me to try. And while this will make me sad, that I can’t fulfill you, I understand.” The tears come so fast I can’t restrain them. The chest-deep sobbing comes after.
“I am so afraid of losing you Katie.” I roll around to embrace her in attempt to hug her so hard that the moment itself was fixed in place.
“It might be impossible for you to be rid of me completely, Penny. But, if this is something I’ll need to do long term, I might want to cultivate one or two other partners. Hunting takes a lot of time I’d rather spend with you.”
I scowl into her chest, I bite her boob unkindly to tell her how I feel about it. She moans anyway. Masochistic sex magnet. “Beh, timid okay, but absolutely never in our bed.” She repositions to stare at me, but I am firm on this, “Unless you can find a partner I jive with, the answer is still no. You have a moon mansion. There are guest rooms in every residence in our systems, you can bang your concubines in a different bed!”
Katie looks a little shocked, but for a different reason than expected, “You would be interested in another wife?”
“What?! That’s what you take from that?”
“Yes! I have projects too Penny! I want to work as much as you do, but my body needs aether, sex and your fucking blood. If I can get all my energy from one encounter, I can get so much more work done when I don’t have to schedule two multi-hour escapades a day!”
I sneer at that, I understand, but it’s still distasteful. “Fine. If you think we’ll get along, I’ll meet your other partners. Not in our bed still stands though.”
Katie starts moving her hands down, but stops short. “I will have you know, that engaging my negotiating side is dangerous while naked.”
“And I’m not afraid to make an Empress decree should you try it.”
“Ugh, you’re no fun.” And then she tickles me mercilessly until I have to teleport out of her spider-like death grip.
I summon a spray bottle of water in my hand and sprits it into her face. “Bad Katie Kat. Bad kitty.”
“You pixie shit, come here.” She uses those long legs and enhanced strength to close the distance fast and I shriek in delight as the chase is on. I retreat to the shuttle and take off when Katie jumps aboard before the elevator closes.
Her grin is a predator’s every bit as vicious as the aether-warped tiger from more than a year ago. “Katie, we’re in a ship. Don’t do anything crazy.”
“I have plans for you, so no promises.” She pounces on me in a way that makes me giggle, and quickly to moan as she holds me close and pulls my hair back.
“Baby, don’t stop.”
She does, out of spite, biting my ear hard enough to pierce it. The pain feels like pleasure now, so I lean into it, purring.
“You’re not the only one who can punish, Penny. But I’m glad you can accept my needs.” She pulls me around for a kiss, a deep, knowing kiss that would have left me spinning by itself, but with the hot and cold and terror treatment, my head can barely stay attached.
“You’ve,” I gasp as she licks my neck, “been tolerant of my habits, only f-fair.” I want her to, but the prudent part of my body, my symbiote most likely, reminds me I am perilously low on aether after her last meal.
I reach up and push at her shoulders gently, “I can’t Kay, I’m too low for you to snack again.”
And for the first time, in maybe ever, Katie pouts. “My memory knows, but you smell so good.”
“Maybe you just need a distraction.”
***
In the morning, I smash a slice of Galaxy fruit in my face between sips of coffee just to get me thinking straight. Well, get my thoughts in order anyway. I’m about as straight as a crankshaft.
The gems I’d set to charge underperformed a little, but it should be enough to jump start the Sector Host’s systems. I give Katie her two-footers and the parts she wanted me to engrave and enchant and kiss her goodbye for the day. I’ve been leaving the shuttle parked outside lately so I don’t have to fiddle with taking my gloves on and off.
/Ship 47, this is Indulgence, I intend to dock with the Sector Host for power source delivery and insertion. Could I be connected to the duty foreman?/
/Indulgence, we’ll tell the duty foreman to expect you/
I anchor to the mechanical moon and use suit thrusters to transport the crate that I brought. Two workers fly up to meet me to help slow me down and direct me to the area where the power supplies are to be installed.
“We just finished installing a breaker box so we can hook your power sources up, lets see what you got.” The foreman asks.
“Does this line connect to a control panel that can alter the flow to and from the power sources?” I unpack the harnesses and the mounts for the gems while his workers look at them oddly.
“Sure does. We had rigged it to be a dead area on the panel, but the boys had it undone before you arrived. So what are we working with?”
“We have two wiring harnesses and two mounting rings per gem. I would like the two smaller gems hooked up in parallel to each other and in series with the larger gem. That’s if the power ratings of those cables are according to specifications.”
“Unorthodox energy storage. Those harnesses convert the aether to electricity?”
“Not exactly. The way it was explained to me is that the aether rides the system to charge what it needs to. My Magitechnicians came up with it. I just make the aether stuff.”
“When you get the time, you should look at how the collectors store and transmit Aether energy and see if you like their method or yours better” I ping him in agreement as I watch his men figure out how the pieces fit together.
I wait a few minutes before I start helping them sus out the assemblage. When everything looks good and mounted and connected, I tell them all to stand back in case a gem fails. I push the button on the relay to connect the storage system and it automatically connects at the lowest demand and scales it up to system demand.
//INITIAL CONDITIONS MET FOR HOST UPLOAD. VACATE INTERNALS OF SECTOR HOST PRIOR TO INITIALIZATION//
//INITIALIZATION COUNTDOWN F.FF ASTORIA STANDARD MINUTES//
“That’s our cue Foreman. Pleasure doing business with you all.” I hand over two bottles of Summer Shine in thanks and send the crew their bonuses on my way out. The five million or so hit to the Aether currency of the Empire is but a drop in the bucket, but since I’d only have a quarter million to my name without the Empire’s share, it still feels like a ton of money.
The countdown is a constant rolling clock at the bottom of my HUD, and once it hits five minutes, I start paying attention to the now more luminous structure in front of me. From here it looks like a fat rosebud with leaf-like coverings curling toward the gas giant, Astoria-3. Can we recommend a change in lighting scheme? I’ll bring it up with the host later. Astorian colors preferred. Tessa chuckles in my mind and mumbles about priorities.
The bud section twists slightly and begins to open, the ends lighting up in a spiral pattern toward a quickly spinning, glowing core. The leaves start to counter rotate and blur slightly in pulses, as though they were quaking. The quake makes a glow from the petals shutter into space. As the pulses ramp up frequency I feel a tingle deep within my brain, an area I know I’m not supposed to feel.
“Tessa, hook me up to every data bank we have, and push as hard with aether and our bracelet to keep the bandwidth as wide as it will go!”
YOU SHOULD LOOK AWAY. RIGHT. NOW.
I try, but I can’t. My skills want to be useful. My mind has always been curious despite the danger. So now, I’m frozen in awe at the strange shuddering flower the size of a city. I feel the shuttle begin to draw me up on the elevator and turn away.
We weren’t fast enough, was my last though before a non-descript sphere shudders into existence and a flood of data crashes over my consciousness.