“You’re turning your back on him? Are you out of your mind”she queried silently.
“Some people might think so. But he’s not going to touch us. At least, not this time. Let’s get back to the tram and go get those people.”
Chapter Seven
When Calan and Ajha returned to Vera’s hovel, twenty more people were waiting with her to go to Calan’s haven. Most were children with their mothers, but there was also a couple with two children. They were a sad looking bunch dirty and dressed in rags, the adults holding bundles of their meager possessions.
He set down the hover scooter and got off, quickly going to the back compartment. Pulling out the entire box of protein bars, he went to where the group sat and passed them out to everyone. They were all tired and hungry, and some of the kids looked starved. There were enough to give everyone two.
“Hello, everyone. I’m Calan Narcaza, and this is Ajha Lann,” he said as he handed out the food bars. “We’ll scoot back to where we left my hover tram and bring it back to take you to the complex. We have more food, showers, and fresh clothing for everyone. Nothing fancy, but clean.”
When he finished handing out the food, Calan and Ajha climbed back on the scooter and sped back to where the tram waited. Getting back to the waiting refugees took only about fifteen minutes. That was time enough for two more women with two children each to join the crowd.
Nobody seemed to care that they had to sit on the floor in the cargo compartment. They waited in line and climbed in at their turn. Twenty minutes later they pulled into the hover bay at the complex.
Calan just called it the Refuge because he thought that should be up to the people of the community to name it. He was building a town, not a business. Because there weren’t enough flats to go around yet, he decided to keep them available for everyone’s use because not all of the other rooms had bathroom facilities and showers.
Temporarily the twenty-six people were divided among the four open flats. A bot tram filled with smart fit shirts, pants, and shoes went to each flat leaving an outfit for each adult and child. The clothing was simple and durable, as well as self-cleaning. It could even change colors.
In an ideal situation, Calan should have waited until he had more flats installed before bringing people into the shelter. He would also have had a staff to help run the program. But he felt his funds were better spent on provisions and infrastructure. Even though the situation wasn’t ideal, his building was a safer place for these people with food readily available to them.
They all seemed happy enough with the situation. While the new people took turns in the showers, Ajha passed out fruit juice pouches and more food bars to the people waiting for their turns. Calan when to each of the adults and logged them in by name along with their children. Eight adults came with a total of eighteen children, one couple with three children, and the rest were single parents or an older sibling with the children.
Calan couldn’t help thinking if there had been a place like this for his mom and Uncle Jerry, he might still be alive. But most of the cyborgs had left Farringay before that. There wasn’t much more they could do without support from the Federation. It wasn’t profitable because Earth’s resources were so depleted.
Earth had been relegated to the status of a backwater planet with depleted resources and population. Why would people want to come to settle on a ruined planet when there were pristine worlds out in the galaxy rich in resources waiting to be tamed?
Calan grew up in a place like that, and he loved it, but he was drawn to Earth by Ajha. He was just idealistic enough to believe he could make a difference here, and he had the funds to do it. His father came from a wealthy agriculturist family on Aledus that divided the proceeds from their crops among themselves and their three children.
Calan’s parents owned a productive farm on Oltarin and ran a small hospital there. They lived on their income from their medical practices and build substantial trust funds for their children. His brother Jamerin bought a tramp freighter, and his sister bought a farm and horses.
Calan bought a big old industrial complex on Earth. Children shouldn’t have to grow up like his mother and Ajha did. The stories his mother had told him from when she was a child made him wonder how she had ever survived.
One lonely night when she was crouched under an abandoned stairway alone, she reached out to his father. She was only five years old fighting off twenty-pound sewer rats with a knife and some concrete rocks.
Calan wasn’t deeply moved by it until he shared similar dreams with Ajha. Knowing only his psion mate could reach his mind from so far away, his parents didn’t try to dissuade him from coming to earth. They were just not happy that he was planning to stay.
Unlike his father, he came to Earth with his eyes wide open. He had studied everything he could find on its current state and Uncle Delmran had come through with information that wasn’t publicly available. That’s how he found out about the vacant industrial complex.
Rax came into the corridor between the new flats while Calan was registering the people they’d brought in. This was his first time seeing women and children in the flesh. Calan took him around and introduced him as the security officer for the complex.
Then he asked Rax to show the people who had bathed and gotten clean clothes to the rooms the that were available. There were no beds, but Rax had found some benches old tables and chairs and put them in the rooms. The rooms had been cleaned thoroughly by cleaning bots, so they were already better than the ruins where most of them took shelter.
They had to sleep on the floor for the time being, but everyone got a pillow and two blankets---one to lay on and one to cover them. Most seemed grateful to have them. Calan logged into the Starport net and ordered air beds for the unfurnished rooms; he would send Rax to pick them up the next day. It would be at least another week before the next ten flats arrived. Ten more would come two weeks after that and every two weeks until there were a hundred of them.
It was still early evening when everyone was settled in for the night. Calan and Ajha were finally alone together in their apartment. As soon as the door closed behind them, Ajha turned to him and hugged him.
“You are doing a wonderful thing. They were all so happy when we gave them food. This place is better than any place we have ever lived. I can hardly believe that I am here with you now. I’ve been alone so long…”
Calan cuddled her head against his shoulder and rested his cheek against her hair.“I felt that loneliness when our minds first touched. It seemed to fill my soul even though my life was good where I was. I realized there would always be an empty place in my soul until I found you.”
“When you came to me in my dreams and held me in your arms, I could almost feel the warmth of your body as I feel it now. But when I woke up alone, the emptiness was almost overwhelming. I still can hardly believe you are really here. If you ever leave me now, I think I would break apart inside.”
“Ajha, my she-ell---beloved, nothing less than death could make me leave you. That’s what psion mates are to each other. We are two halves of a whole. We belong to each other. We belong together.”
“I want you---your kisses, your hands on my body, your cock inside me…your arms around me… I need…you… love you. Love. Love. Love.”
Need… want… love. Love. Love.
