Calan held them entranced in those horrors for a few endless minutes. He pulled out so abruptly they all fell to the ground stunned. Then the two hundred twenty-five cyborg soldiers blinked out likethey were never there.
Because they never were.
Calan turned and took Ajha into his arms, hugging her and rubbing her back as he held her. Then he kissed her long and slow, a celebration of their success what’s more a celebration of their love for each other. They let their love drive back the terrible memories they shared with the gangers and overlords.
The overlords and gangers remained psionically stunned for about a half hour. Calan and Ajha stood watch, waiting while they roused from their stupor. They were waiting to see if they needed to restore the cyborg illusion.
A few minutes later the two psions saw them getting up off the ground. Shortly after that, Calan’s com bleeped in his pocket. He pulled it out and answered it in screen mode.
“You win, Narcaza,” Berke growled. “Tell my people if they want to come back they will get to keep eighty percent of what they bring in after room and board. No more lockdowns. All of the overlords have agreed. Same goes for the fighters.”
“Well, considering you weren’t paying them before, they may think it’s a good deal. I will pass on that information to them. I trust you will no longer be kidnapping people off the streets to work for you.”
“We won’t, as long as you have those cyborgs to defend them.”
“They’re just a call away,” Calan said. It wasn’t exactly a lie.
Calan and Ajha went back into the refuge and lifted the lockdown. Rax had given him the idea to create the illusion of the cyborg warriors. He was talking to Rax about the things that needed to be done at the refuge. He’d offhandedly said he could use at least fifty like Rax.
Rax contacted Cyborg Command to see if there were any more cyborgs available to come help finish building Revival. Command told him that the Peru cyborg facility had never stopped producing them after their inactive cyborgs were sent to the cyborg stronghold on Phantom.
Even though the Federation no longer financially supported the production of cyborgs, they didn’t prohibit it. The Peru facility had continued breeding them. Since they generally had a surplus, Calan offered jobs to fifty of them.
They would come programmed for law enforcement protocols and construction skills. The cyborgs would be awakened and offered the positions those that accepted would receive the necessary programming.
Even though most of the people who entered the refuge were willing to work for their keep, few had skills past hunting and foraging for food. Training them for the skills needed to finish the sanctuary and rebuild the rest of the community west of Starport City would take up to a year or more.
The last few months, struggling to keep ahead of the influx of refugees showed Calan that he needed help. He required skilled people to demolish the ruins and put up the new modular homes. The additional cyborgs would double as security. They would arrive within a matter of days.
That would free him to spend more time caring for the people at the refuge instead of working on the infrastructure.
While he doubted the overlords and their gangers would suddenly become model citizens, perhaps he had enlightened them to refine the way they did business.
Only about a quarter of the fighters and sex workers returned to work for the overlords under the new offer. They were guaranteed that they were free to come and go as they pleased. Calan even had Rax transport them back to the red-light districts.
There was no shortage of people to fill the space that was vacated. By the time the cyborgs arrived, there were over three thousand people in the Refuge of Revival.
While Calan didn’t buy the cyborgs, he paid the expenses of creating them. They were housed dorm style in the north building of the refuge. Since the ratio of females to males was about two to one Calan requested another fifty to be sent in the spring in time for planting. The current group had arrived just in time for harvest.
Finally, after months of waiting for the heavy machinery, it arrived so they could clear the ruins to make way for new homes and shops. Also, in that shipment came a multipurpose farm machine to plow, plant and harvest.
With ample resources for the people living in the refuge, they were freed to spend time acquiring skills and learning crafts. At that point, agricultural products were the most significant need followed by building and assembly of prefab structures.
Land west of the Refuge would be cleared for planting, and land between the Refuge and Starport City would become the town. As families grew, they could move into the town.
Calan was happy with the progress at the refuge because the residents were starting to take over chores and maintenance. It gave him more time to devote to his practice and to spend with Ajha.
Chapter Nineteen
“She-ell, my beautiful mate. I love every inch of you…I feel your pleasure as my lips drag over your smooth skin and your body shivers with pleasure. I tease the pebbled tip of your nipple with my tongue and your core throbs in delight. So, I take it in my mouth and suck on it, and your body quakes in the same rhythm as you cum.”
“My mate, my love! Every touch, every kiss, from you make my body sing as never before you claimed my heart and bound my soul to yours. And though I cum for you, I ache within my core for you to fill me with your length and kiss my womb.
“Ah, yes! We are one. I am in you, and you are in me, joined mind and body. The sensation of your girth caressing my inner walls is exquisite. The pressure of your flesh against my woman’s bud draws me steadily toward the summit of ecstasy with you where we will soar together in the vortex of our rapture…”
As Calan collapsed on top of her gasping to catch his breath, Ajha hugged him and kissed his throat celebrating their mutual delight. It was so much more than just sex when she could feel what he felt, and he could feel what she felt compounding their own sensations of their union.
Sometimes their union was slow and tender, and other times it was boisterous like a full body workout, but always a joyful merging of mind and body.
