Chapter 8: Disrespectful Allies

The man sitting across from Ashley also remained sitting. He looked at me as the crowd dispersed. The chatter from the people leaving made conversation impossible. I looked over at Jessica who was reaching across the table to take the hand of her newest concubine. He leaned over the table, but I could not hear what Jessica said to him.

I was about to step forward when Constance screamed in surprise and fear. I turned to my left to find that the man sitting across from us had lunged over the table and grabbed her robe.

"I want to see the body!" he crowed.

Miki and Lenore both dove forward as I stepped onto the bench. I thrust my hand under the man's arm and chopped upward breaking his grip on the robe. "Ashley, get Aine and Constance to the pod. AI, please forward permission for any of my concubines to enter the pod when they arrive."

"Hey! What gives?" the man asked as he brought his hand down on the table. "I wasn't hurting her."

"Constance is my lady, not some plaything for you," I said with a growl as I stepped back off the bench.

"Who cares? They are here to provide us a place to stick our dicks. I can't even understand why you had her in that stupid hotel bathrobe," the man said scornfully.

"Why I have her in that bathrobe is no business of yours. And I'd like you to keep your hands off my property," I said.

"Your property?" the man asked. I noticed that Jessica's two men had moved away from the table and were working to slip between two tables and join her next to me.

Ashley put a hand on my shoulder. "Mark, are you sure it's a good idea for us to wander the hallways? There might be others like this man."

An extremely loud bell-like sound rang out. "I'd like to remind all citizens that touching a concubine you don't own is a crime and will be prosecuted if the concubine's owner demands action. Always ask permission. This will be very strictly enforced."

I smiled at Ashley. "And it sounds like you should be safe. I know you know some defense skills thanks to all our training. The main thing is to get Constance and Aine back to our home safely. I don't want any problems."

"Why can't I stay?" Aine asked petulantly.

I looked over at the naked redhead. "Because we already saw one man dive over a table to assault Constance. You are naked and while I have issues with your personality, I am thinking of just asking the medical system to lock your current appearance. Its very sexy."

"I'll say," Jessica said lustfully. "Mark, if you want her disciplined send her my way. Kathy, Milli and I would love to turn her world upside down."

Aine's face turned white. "No, please."

"Really? You made it seem like you loved sex. You've definitely been very aggressive towards me," I said.

Aine blushed. "I don't deny that I've had a lot of sex in the last year. I guess you never had to deal with knowing you were going to die when the Sa'arm came."

"No, we had to deal with the possibility that Mark here would die once he gets picked up," Lenore said. "And I have a daughter who I want to see grow up."

Aine nodded to Lenore. "Well I did. The day the president announced that the Sa'arm existed and that some people would be able to leave Earth with some companions I realized that the only way I was leaving the planet was as a companion."

"That's the same situation I was in," Lenore said. "Mark probably remembers that I collapsed when the restaurant I worked at was the site of a pickup."

"Oh?" Aine said. "Wouldn't you have been very happy to see that?"

"Not when I was standing on the patio taking an order and the shield they put up blocked the entrance to the building. I was outside the pickup," Lenore said.

I watched Aine as her stern and angry visage dropped for just a moment. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "How did you recover from that?"

Lenore laughed. "That was the day that Mark claimed me."

"But you weren't picked up," the man who had been sitting across from Ashley said.

I looked around. Morgan and Jason were making their way over to where Jessica and I were standing. Another six men I did not recognize were making their way towards us. Two appeared to be in thelr late teens, but the other four had greying hair and wrinkled faces.

Ashley laughed. "Mark, sorry, but we can't leave until Aine understands." She turned to face the man who had commented. "The day that happened Mark and several friends were celebrating one of their members achieving a qualifying score in their first CAP test. The group Lenore was serving included Mark. He talked to her and asked if she'd be willing to live with him until they got picked up."

"You couldn't do that!" one of the older approaching me said.

"Why not?" I asked. "We even got told the night of the special that if you had someone you wanted to bring along they needed to stay within fifteen feet of you at all times. I'll admit Lenore was often a bit further than that, but we tried to be together whenever a pickup was possible."

"You kept six girls near you?" the man who had sat across from Ashley asked.

"Nope," I said. "I thought my score was only a seven point five. So my plan was only four, but I only met Tatyana yesterday."

"Wait," one of the older men said. He was striking looking with blond hair that was peppered with grey strands. He had an arm around a woman who looked to be about the same age as him. A second younger woman stood behind him. She was visibly sulking at being ignored. "You only have a seven point five, but you have six women? How does that work?"

"Right at the start of the pickup I told the men handling it that I had selected my four ladies. He seemed to mutter something and then told me that I had the score to take six with me," I said with a shrug. "I guess my score had improved."

The first older man to speak snorted. "You're too young to know what to do with any woman, let alone six. You should loan them to me, I'll get them pregnant for you."

"Hard to do that with me," Lenore said. "I'm already pregnant."

I raised a hand. "Look, it seems like we have a lot of people standing around. I don't expect anyone to be able to remember every name, but why not have the citizens introduce themselves so we know who is talking. I am Mark Parker, and as you have heard six of these wonderful ladies are mine. Please treat them with respect if you see them."

Jessica laughed. "Trust Mark to try to take charge. I'm Jessica Thornton. I have a score above seven."

"Just above seven?" one of the younger men standing nearby asked. "You aren't sure?"

"I know the last score I got when testing, but I also know that Mark's score changed without an official test, so I'm not going to claim that I'm sure what it is. We both got told that most people get their highest score when they are nineteen or twenty," Jessica replied.

The man who had been sitting across from Ashley looked uncomfortable. "I'm Alexander Ambrose. My friends called me Double A for some reason."

"Did you like that?" I asked.

The man shook his head. "Hell no, but somehow I ended up living with a bunch of jocks. They expected me to help them with their studies and called me names."

I nodded. "Did they know your score?" I asked.

"I made sure never to tell them," Alexander said. "I had a feeling that they would have sought even more ways to make me miserable. They did go out of their way to embarrass me in front of most girls. I felt very lucky that Wanda was willing to date me."

"And I'm very happy we were dating last night at the old style ice cream shop in town last night when there was a pickup," the younger girl at his side said.

Morgan stepped forward and leaned over the table. "I'm Morgan, in case you were all wondering."

The loudest of the four greying men who had approached glared at Morgan. "You seem relaxed listening to this boy making pronouncements like he is some kind of expert."

"I've known him for more than a year," Morgan said. "And right now I agree with him that we should all introduce ourselves. I know Jessica and Mark from before and Alex here was kind enough to speak up. Who are you to criticize someone you have never met?"

"My name is Kenneth Percival Belvedere Prescott the Fourth," the man said haughtily. "I was the president of my family's construction firm."

The man who had an arm around one of his concubines shook his head. "From what little I've seen, what we did on Earth doesn't matter anymore. I'm Robert Bruce."

"You're kidding," Alex said.

"I'm not," the man said with a shake of his head. "And before you ask, no, I'm not named after anyone from Scottish history. My mother actually doesn't know anything about Scotland."

"Not much about America," the woman in his arms said. "Stupid drugged out whore."

The man sighed. "Crystal, you promised to not talk about that. We have a new future ahead of us. Let's stop worrying about the past."

The woman turned and looked at him; she said nothing and just held onto him as I looked at the four men who had yet to speak.

One of the younger ones stepped forward. He looked to be about eighteen, but the two women with him were both in their late thirties. "Jack Mycroft," he said with a mild scowl. "I know, my father thought it would be a big laugh. I told most people my name was Jim."