Chapter 22: Outposts

I learnt a new form of love the day my daughter was born.

When Tory had started her next group of girls incubating, I found myself gravitating to one of them in particular. I knew she was very special. I knew she was a true sister to me and that I would need to raise her as my daughter.

Call it a premonition if you wish, but the certainty was there all the same. She wouldn’t take the place of my precious lost daughter, yet I knew this little girl was very special to me.

I was glad that one of the other eggs had split as it made it easier for me to justify why I also got a child to raise. I knew Tory planned for the girls to take responsibility for these children and I agreed with her. Tory mentioned that she had an odd child, but Cee and Dee could raise it; my plan was different.

The day she decided to release them from the tank I made sure, I was there, and I claimed my daughter. I named her Kathy, and I loved her. She was mine. She was my little girl. It was like looking at a mirror image of myself in female form.

She was gorgeous, and when she looked into my eyes that day, I knew she had stolen a piece of my heart and that none could take it from her. I wonder if all parents feel this way when their child is born. While genetically, Kathy was my sister, she would always be a child of my heart.

In some ways, it eased the pain of losing Ryka and Pip.

I vowed I would find my other special daughter one day. The girls had probably wondered why I had cried off spending the week after I got back with them but I just couldn’t do it. I needed the time to heal both the physical wounds and the mental ones.

Tory had decided to remove all the children on the same day, so it was an exciting day for us from the older generation. We became parents that day, and I think we all took a huge step towards adulthood. I know I did.

While the girls felt that they were ready for babies, I think them having an older child to be totally responsible for first, would give them more confidence when they do finally fall pregnant. To date, we’ve not had to do deal with tiny infants because Tory keeps hers in gestation until they are effectively five years of age.

I wasn’t the least bit sad that none of the girls had fallen pregnant from their first time with me. I didn’t believe any of us were ready for that responsibility and I even suspected that I did something to ensure they didn’t fall.

David’s vids said humans weren’t considered adults until they were eighteen and I think in my mind, I wanted the girls to be adults before having a child of their own. Ryka had been eighteen, and she had fallen from our first mating.

Kathy was so much fun and so frustrating. I didn’t know a person could ask that many questions in one sentence and on one breath. Kathy also debated everything. I don’t remember any of the other girls behaving as she did.

I remember going to see Tory one day, and I asked her if that was what I’d been like after she had released me into the world. She laughed and told me no, I’d been ten times worse. I shuddered to think what it had been like for Cee, Dee and Tory.

I had memories from my perspective but not theirs. Tory chuckled and asked me what it felt like to get a taste of my own medicine. I told her I loved her and that I was so glad she was my mother. I think I choked her up as much as was possible for her kind.

I also went and hugged Dee and Cee and told them how much I loved and appreciated them. I was truly starting to comprehend what being a parent truly entailed. They both chuckled and reminded me the Grandparents were available for babysitting duties. Damn, I had greatest parents even if they weren’t human.

Kathy wasn’t real happy about having to attend school with the other kids. I told her it was part of growing up and I had other duties to perform while she was at school. She sighed and agreed that we all had our duties. Fuck, she made me laugh.

As the years passed, more and more responsibilities seemed to be directed my way. Every time I turned around, it was some damn thing. It got a bit tiresome at times. I was starting to think I needed another holiday but not like the last one.

By the time I was twenty-eight, I had eighteen other kids. One to each of the three older generations. I always tried to spend time with them, and I liked my kids, but none of them really claimed a piece of my heart like Kathy did. I think if they were growing up in my home with their mother, it would have been different.

Since they were the responsibility of the mother and therefore the couple that was together, I seemed to think of the child as theirs more than mine. I was just the sperm donor. Talking about making donations, Tory surprised me the day she asked me to make one for her.

We both knew she considered me special and I asked her if she would use it to produce more children. She said yes but not in the way, I was thinking. She told me David had an anomaly in his Genes that she was having difficulties identifying.

I have the same anomaly, as does Kathy. She only had a few precious samples of David’s DNA, so she wanted to use a donation or two from me for her studies. I agreed as long as she didn’t use it to produce any clones of me, and no children with more than one strand of my helix as long as I lived here.

She was happy to agree with this. She and I both knew I was referring to my shapeshifter helix. Apparently, my weird sperm has the helix even though no other children have been born male. Nor have any of them been born with deformities.

She believes that my helix melds with the mothers and reforms. The children get some of mine and some of theirs. She had picked up that not all of them have the anomaly. The six children the older group of girls had born, have it. The rest of the kids, have been more hit and miss with only half of them receiving it.

I ended up with eighteen kids because the girls from the third and fourth gestations had this idea that their first child had to be mine. When I informed the girls that I wouldn’t service them unless they were eighteen, I would only service when in season and only until they fell pregnant, they were a little peeved.

I suspected some of them were more curious as to why my girls still slept with me one night a week in turn even though they loved their partners. I also suspected some wanted to be my girl all the time, but I wasn’t playing the game.

I was still the only adult who didn’t have a main partner. I was also the only high-level mage and for all intent the Lord of all I surveyed. They may be Tory’s children, but they were my people. I told those who asked that my girls were my consorts, but they were also entitled to have someone who loved them.

To be honest, I was more than happy with the way things were. I still didn’t feel that my life partner was amongst the girls who were here. I didn’t believe I’d get Ryka back.

However, now that I’d had a taste of what love could be like, I wouldn’t settle for anything less.

I really did need a holiday.

You’d think after the last one I’d have learnt my lesson but ten years is a long time without one. Tory was my saviour. She mentioned she had lost contact with several of her outposts.

I’d been playing with making gems and magical items, but I was missing some of the key base elements I required. I wasn’t strong enough to alter one element to another. But I could combine any combination I had as long as I had them.

Going to investigate the outposts, and updating their operations gave me an opportunity to go prospecting. We still used David’s shuttle on and off, and I’d tinkered with it over the years to keep it in top working order.

I could load a heap of gear in the hold including a small workforce of standard androids. After a discussion with Rusty and Tory, we decided that we would drop a pair of Rusty’s zoetics of at each outpost to oversee their operations if they wanted to go. I would also take a few buds to make some controllers.

Rusty’s zoetics were more than happy to do this. They were not as parent orientated as Tory’s were. To be honest, we had about two dozen of them that didn’t really have any duties, so they quickly volunteered when I asked.

I had six small cabins we could use on the shuttle. I’d converted two into one, so I could fit a bed that I could sleep in. Kathy got the next room, and we ended up filling two with junk.

The zoetics didn’t really need to lay down to rest. So we stripped the last cabin, and I installed twelve recharge bays, and a nutrient and filtration system. They said they were happy to drop into a hibernation mode until I needed them. I was after peace, and quiet, so this suited me just fine.

The real problems were Kathy, Freya and Tina, her daughter. Tina had become Kathy’s faerie. She was born not long after Kathy came to live with us and once she was out of nappies, she was Kathy’s constant companion.

Since Kathy was with me unless my duties required otherwise, the four of us spent a lot of time together. I had a snowballs chance in hot water, of leaving them at home. So I just gave in and took them with me.

I’d done a couple of major modifications to the shuttle over the years. For one I’d ripped out a lot of the cooling and energy systems for the engines. This gave me much more space. We’d found a spray pack of a substance that formed a ceramic coat in the ship, and I was able to replicate it.

If I put a piece of copper on it and put the micro-organisms that created the Quaz crystals on them and provided the correct combination of chemicals, they grew new crystals. They didn’t like the other metal. They did like copper and stayed on the ceramic.

So I got the idea to paint the roof of the engine bay with the paint. We attached a copper mesh, and then I flooded the room with the chemicals. The roof of the bay and a third of the way down the walls is now covered in Quaz crystals.

I’d attached other cables to the wall and connected them into the power converters. The crystals recycled the heat given off by the engines into electricity to keep them running. To make up for the small losses, I added a couple of thin, wide strips of copper to the hull that linked down to the engine bay.

I then peppered the copper on the hull with crystal shards. A bit of sunlight or heat is all that is required to top the system back up. Now we have no problems at all with requiring any other fuel or energy system on the ship.

I’d also installed a bud from Rusty as the new computer for the ship and Mia now runs that ship like a pro. I basically get in the ship, tell Mia where I want to go and settle in for the ride. It’s bloody marvellous.

The girls weren’t too happy when I said I was going for a month and they had to look after things. I also warned them I wouldn’t take any more than one call from them each a day, so they had better think hard about the problem before they called.

I let them know that some of the places I would visit had limited possibilities for communication, and probably only Tory or Rusty would be able to contact me. Tory, Rusty and the zoetics had also been warned that unless it was a true emergency, I didn’t want to hear about it.

I sighed in frustration. We had barely been gone for ten minutes, and Able was contacting me with some stupid problem. I must have growled in frustration because she got miffed and said, “Fine if you didn’t want to answer a simple question I’ll work it out for myself.” Then she broke the connection.

Sometimes, Able can be a bit much. Even after ten years, she still tries to cling to me, and it gets very wearying. No wonder I needed this holiday.

Tory then called me, “Mikal, all calls to you will be directed to Rusty or me. If we deem your assistance is required we will contact you, is that acceptable?”

I sighed in relief, “Thank you, mother. I love you more than I could ever say.”

Tory chuckled, “I know my son. Now you and Kathy have a lovely working holiday.”

Tory knew I didn’t plan to just fix up the outposts. I’d reorganised one of the small cargo holds into a machine shop that had a little furnace so that I could use the room for jewellery manufacture. The ship even had a small recycler/replicator in it that I had installed. We had bigger ones in the other holds for the new outposts.