Page 9 of Joven's Bride
Chapter Four
Carly spent a couple hours at the agency’s office getting a medical scan, required inoculations, and a bioimplant for the most common alien language spoken on most Alliance worlds. It was a far more straightforward process than she expected. The medical technician swabbed her cheek and picked some cells to imprint with the language, then painlessly injected them back into her neck.
Though not sure how it worked, she simply accepted that it did. The language would be imprinted into her brain as those programmed cells multiplied. Alliance technology was far ahead of Earth, but Earthers would reap the benefits because homo sapiens were more prevalent in the galaxy that anyone imagined.
As the brides and grooms were processed for departure, shuttle buses came to take them to the helicopter that would take them to the secret Alliance Starbase in the Monongahela Forest that couldn’t be reached by road. From there they would shuttle up to the passenger-freighter that would take them to the various planets to unite with their mates.
Carly felt giddy and on edge, not really having second thoughts, just nervous about going into space. She had only been on a plane once in her life, and she’d gotten the same edgy excitement. Within a couple of days, she would be able to contact Joven directly then throughout the long journey.
Twenty-five people shuttled up to theStar Traveler, three of them were from the secret Starbase, going to unite with their mates. A cheerful passenger relations director met them in the shuttle bay and led them to a conference room to review the safety regulations and rules of conduct.
TheStar Travelerwas a midsized interstellar passenger freighter with the capacity for 50-100 passengers and many tons of freight. Some of the twenty crewmembers, both male and female, were feline humanoids.
Afterward, drinks and snacks were brought in by androids for a meet and greet with the rest of the passengers. She saw some Narovian felines in the flesh a few times that day. A few had served on Earth as Law Enforcement agents at the Starbase, so they spoke English reasonably well. The other felines were coming from various worlds, and it was too soon for her language implant to be effective.
“Joven, it’s so great to see you in person. You are taller than I realized. Or isn’t the image accurate,” Carly asked later when she was alone in her cabin.
He smiled seeming as happy to see her. “It should reflect my true stature. You are just as I imagined, as my processor translated your image to 3-D based on your dimensions from your dossier.”
He was head and shoulders taller than her 5’7.”
“I was pretty nervous about going into space, but now that I am, it’s better than I expected. After they went over the safety regs, we had a meet and greet. There are quite a few felines on board traveling to other worlds to meet theirmeomees.”she told him. “I even met a woman about my age from Earth. She is also going to meet hermeomee. But on a different world. None of the others are coming to Glasica.”
“That’s why it will take so long for you to arrive. Glasica is a long way from the normal travel and shipping routes,” he explained.
“Probably cost a lot, too.”
“It is worth every credit for me to find you,meomee. There was a good probability you would be from Earth because my genetic line had several people stationed on Earth at various times. I saved credits most of my life in anticipation of finding you there. It is no hardship,meomee.”
Even though he knew she was a hologram, Joven raised his hand as if to cup her cheek with it. “Are your quarters satisfactory, meomee?”
“Actually, it’s much nicer than I expected. Our space ships are completely utilitarian. But I have only seen pictures. This space ship is bigger than our space stations.”
“That’s because it hauls cargo as well as people. But the passenger quarters are designed for modest comfort.”
Carly panned the tablet around the small cabin so he could see. “There is even carpet of some kind on the floor. I have a chair and a table and room to stow my luggage under the bunk,” she told him. As she looked back at him, he was staring at her so intently that she caught her breath. A shock of attraction surged through her.
By the look on his face, she could see that he felt it, too.
“Carly…” was all he said.
“I know.” She smiled at him a little ruefully. It would be weeks before they could even share their first kiss. But it would erupt into far more than just a kiss. Felines bonded with their meomees emotionally while mating repeatedly driven by potent pheromones.
The big feline humanoid cyborg attracted Carly even without the lure of his body chemistry. Another woman might find him a little scary, but she knew with certainty that she had nothing to fear from him. The timbre of his voice was like an intimate caress that tightened her nipples and caused her pussy to clench, aching with emptiness.
It was sweet torture to stand before his holographic form, unable to even touch him. Carly gave herself a mental shake to stop the sexual fantasy. This was their time to get to know each other before the mating frenzy of the meomee bond. She breathed in and let it out slowly.
“Tell me about your work,” Carly said, breaking the spell.
Joven smirked. He knew why she was changing the subject, and she knew he knew. “What do you want to know?”
He told her how his job was created after his friend Rader and his bride were almost killed by poachers taking off from Glasica making his flyer crash. The remoteness of their star system meant that Alliance Law Enforcement only came to investigate after such incidents. After being utterly terrified that his wife would die before they could get help, Rader quickly convinced the governing council that they needed their own space patrol.
Joven was the captain of an Alliance Battleship during the Drayid war with thirty years’ experience. Rader was a warrior who traveled on that ship to the planetary battlefronts. Rader learned that Joven was leaving the Defense Force through the cyborg network after the crash and invited him to settle on Glasica.
The other cyborg petitioned the Glasica council to create the space security force for their star system with backing from the Alliance, or they might become prey to worse incursions into their system. Joven was hired to organize and run it.
Meanwhile, Joven bought the deluxe plan from Narovian Interstellar Matchmaking Service and a huge piece of land a continent away from Rader’s. He hoped the service would find hismeomee.If they didn’t, Joven planned to make his own offspring in vitro and grow it in an artificial womb much like the cyborgs were made.
