For the first time, it occurred to me that Station 21—not to mention Khanav Prime—must strike many humans as being similar to their Earther city of Las Vegas in many ways—full of riotous colors and bright, flashing signals.
Even our garden spoke to that aesthetic, I realized as I moved toward the entrance. There were plenty of Earth plants there, of course, as we had done our best to create an environment hospitable to our ever-growing mixed population of humans and Khanavai.
But there were even more Khanavai plants, displaying all the bright colors we preferred.
Still, in a green dress among many green plants, Deandra would blend in.
I can’t run this search alone. But if I alerted station security, Deandra would be classified as a runaway bride. I couldn’t have that. I needed to find her and convince her to come back to the Bride Games—preferably before Vos finished interviewing all the human females in the Bride Pageant.
Even so, missing the initial pageant could be overcome. After all, Amelia had ended up mated to Zont, and she had never been through any of the Bride Games.
I just have to find her before anyone else realizes she’s missing.
I could cut across the garden and make my way to the Bride Games Control Center. My station there had access to more information than I could get to with my com, even with my override codes.
I would keep an eye out for her in the garden, but if I didn’t see her, I would put off doing a full-blown search through the tangle of plants until I was certain she was nowhere else to be found on the station.
Pleased with my plan, I set out on the first path leading into the overhanging trees, evanescence flowers on the branches drooping down far enough to brush the top of my head as I walked under them.
Briefly, I let myself fantasize about what might happen if I did find Deandra hidden away in this semi-wilderness.
The heady scent of giant alornin blooms invading my senses, I imagined pulling her down onto a soft bed of their silken petals.
The remembered scent of her, sweeter even than the flowers, swirled up around us in my imagination, and I pictured slowly removing the green dress she supposedly wore now.
Under my chavan, my cock grew hard, and I swallowed, briefly allowing myself to savor the ache in my testicles as I daydreamed about what it would feel like to use my mating cock with my beautiful human mate.
After a few micro-moments, trying to shove the image away, I muttered, “Quit torturing yourself, man.”
To distract myself, I focused on considering the various areas of Station 21 I might search myself, as opposed to the ones the computer could survey for me once I got to my communications station in the control room.
I had almost calmed my raging lust when I stepped out of the garden on the other side and headed toward the corridor where the Bride Games Control Center was located.
But as I rounded the corner, I discovered Deandra peering through the translucent doorway into the main control center.
As soon as I saw her, my erection returned with a vengeance, and my voice came out more harshly than I intended.
“What are you doing here?”
Chapter Thirteen
Dee
At the sound of Wex’s voice, I jumped guiltily, spinning around to face him.
In retrospect, it had been stupid to try to break into the Bride Games Control Center when the Bride Games were currently running.
But this was the only room I had found listed on the directory kiosk in the food court that might have given me access to a Khanavai-controlled computer. Of course, the room was full of Khanavai.
And of course, Wex had found me here.
“Oh, hi,” I said as he strode toward me, an odd, pained expression on his face. “I was curious about the Bride Lottery control center.”
Best to play dumb. Men often seemed willing to believe women were stupid—at least they did on Earth, and I was hoping Khanavai males weren’t that different from human men in that regard.
Wex frowned. “You’re supposed to be in the Bride Pageant right now.”
I waved my hand airily. “Oh, that? It’ll go on for hours. I can slip in at the back of the line.”
Not that I actually planned to do the stupid interview at all.
And maybe I could turn this situation to my advantage, after all.
“Would you be willing to show me around?” I asked, batting my eyelashes.
Wex gave me a skeptical glance, and I dropped the eyelash-batting—but I kept up the mindless chatter. “I learned so much about the entire Bride Lottery and Games process during my trial. Now that I’m here, I can’t help but be curious about what goes on behind the scenes.”
“I guess I could show you how the control room runs.” He reached past me and ran his wristcom over the lock panel. “There’s nothing top-secret in here.”
Did that mean there were top-secret things elsewhere on Station 21? It was pretty common knowledge that more than half this space station was also a military base, a final front against the Alveron Horde, should they make it as far as Earth—as they had, less than a year before.
Maybe there were other, more secret elements, too.
We moved inside the large, open room, where Khanavai males sat—and sometimes stood—at terminals, screens floating in the air in front of them, all of them showing various vid angles of the Bride Pageant going on right now.
“There’s enough of a lag time between our transmission and Earth’s reception that we can do some light post-production work on the games as they are happening,” Wex explained to me, dropping into something like a lecturing tone—the kind of lectures I’d gotten in college, not the kind my father liked to give.
I had to stifle a snicker at the thought of Wex beginning to extol the virtues of hiding from government surveillance.
He glanced down at
