The evaluation process for becoming an Asteroid Mate was straightforward, with Aspri giving her a physical to confirm that she was healthy. The "psychological exam" was really just an extension of the physical, making sure she didn't have any mental health issues that could be passed on to the offspring. After those were complete, he explained the actual pairing process, showing her the long cloak that hid their bodies from each other, and taking her into the room off the Medic Lab where he monitored the act itself, the same room she'd seen Relican pairs streaming in and out of every time she visited Nelle. Tierney still wasn't entirely certain she could have sex while someone else was in the room, but she smiled and nodded and said what she needed to.

This is better than nothing, she silently repeated to herself. This is better than no Tausson at all.

She'd hoped to keep her decision secret until it was definite that she had been selected as Tausson's pair. However, with Nelle still residing in the Medic Lab, and Aspri seemingly unconcerned with keeping his explanations private, Tierney was forced to tell her boss what she was doing and why.

"I'm not so sure this is better than nothing," Nelle whispered when Tierney was finished. "Even with his lineage, they can't force him to be paired, can they? Why doesn't he just leave the Squad and live with you on the cart?"

Tierney shook her head. "So much of his identity is wrapped up in the Squad. He's so proud of what he's accomplished. Losing command of the Irral has been hard enough on him -- I couldn't ask him to give up the chance of ever regaining it just for me."

After giving her a long, hard stare, Nelle let out a sigh and asked, "Will it interfere with your ability to serve as my Chief of Staff?"

Tierney hadn't realized how much she wanted Nelle's blessing until she'd received it -- however tacit it may have been. Her eyes swelled with tears, and she reached down to give the President a fervent hug.

Aspri said that there wouldn't be a decision for at least a week, so Tierney spent the next few days settling into a routine. She got Inlan to explain how the clocks worked, with hours being identified not with numbers but gemstones. Of course the Relican names for the gems were different than the Earth names, and mostly didn't translate. Inlan also showed her how to set the alarm by placing a tiny electronic sticker on the cylinder at a specific spot. The buzzing sound it made was just as miserable as those on Earth -- and just as effective.

Inlan also showed her where the training room was, and how to use some of the equipment. She'd always preferred the elliptical at the White House gym, and the Relicans had something similar, although Tierney had to use it on the easiest setting since it was meant to train Squad members who were already super strong before stepping foot on the ship. Up at six, Tierney would work out for an hour, then go back to her room to get ready for her 8AM meeting with Nelle.

Hoff had given the President a portable sightscreen to use, so usually they'd go in Aspri's office for privacy and call the cart to speak to a Cabinet member or someone from Congress. After that, Tierney would go back to her room and use her own sightscreen to spend a few hours talking with a rotating list of governors, before going to the nutrient supply for lunch.

Sometimes she ran into Inlan, Lutari, or Hoff, and they would eat together and chat, but the other Relicans on board, while quick to give her a polite smile or friendly nod, kept their distance, only talking to her when she asked them a question. At first she'd taken it personally, but then Lutari explained that the Relican Squad was trained to avoid cultural contamination. Usually interactions with relocated species were limited strictly to the command crew and those pairing with Asteroid Mates. Having members of the species on board a Squad vessel was highly irregular, and the crew was all a bit on edge.

"Then why are you talking to me?" Tierney had asked as they put their meal trays in the disposal.

Lutari shrugged. "Inlan talked to you first, and I've never seen you trying to influence me or anyone else. If anything it's the opposite -- you're always asking questions about how we do things."

More calls with more governors followed lunch, and at five she went to the command center to discuss the issues that had been presented with Commander Arrat, or work with Hoff on setting up a hotline for cart residents to leave a message for the federal government directly. Staffers would assemble a frequently asked questions list and send it to her to answer, and then they could send it out to the governors to distribute among the citizens.

The project was fun because it was challenging, and it was useful because it kept Tierney's mind off of Tausson. Mostly. She hadn't seen him at all since he'd secretly visited her in her room. And while her feelings for him hadn't diminished during their time apart, she couldn't help but worry that his had.

On Tierney's seventh day on board, Nelle left the Irral and conveyed to the cart. Because of Tierney's potential status as an Asteroid Mate, she was granted approval to remain on board by Commander Arrat. It was a quick goodbye -- Tierney was running late for a call with the Governor of Montana, and the President was anxious to start visiting Americans and hearing directly from them about how they were adjusting. Tierney didn't even make the connection that she was the last human on the Irral until hours later when she was in the command center, working with Hoff. She was mid-sentence when the thought suddenly struck her: I was the last human on Earth, and now I'm the last human on this ship.

"Miss Dawson? Are you alright?" asked Hoff.

The reality of what had happened to her planet, to her species, came crashing down on her, intermingling with the magnitude of her decision to become an Asteroid Mate.

What have I done? I just lost everything, and now I'm giving up my freedom to be with an alien I met a month ago? I won't see my family again in person for two years. My home is gone. I have no home.

The floor tipped beneath her, but Hoff's strong arms caught her before she fell over the railing.

"Aspri," he said into his sleeve, "yintib war--"

"I'm okay," Tierney said, though her head was still whirling. "You don't have to call Aspri. I just need to sit for a minute." Hoff lowered her to the floor and she put her head between her knees, taking long, deep breaths.

"Hoff, nakal," came Aspri's voice from the Communications Officer's sleeve. "Malha an ta warilat?"

Tierney had spent enough time with the Squad to learn some of the Relican words. Nakal meant transmit, and Malha an ta meant What is the. Even though she didn't know the last word, the overall meaning of the question was clear enough.

"I'm fine, really," she said, her head starting to clear. "I just got a little dizzy."

"Katia indar, Aspri," said Hoff, keeping his eye on Tierney. "Hayalni nakal."

End transmit, Tierney thought to herself, though she didn't catch the first thing he'd said to Aspri.

"Firka, Hoff."

Firka was the first word she'd learned -- it meant Squad.

Even reeling from a dizzy spell, Tierney heard the tenderness in the men's voices when they said each other's names. She wondered if anyone else noticed it, but the idea of two Relican males being in love was probably too far a stretch for them to even consider. Did Aspri and Hoff even know how they felt?

Undir was standing nearby, ready to offer assistance. The rest of the command crew were still at their stations, either politely ignoring her, like Second Elic, or watching her with concern. Thankfully Rasmus was usually in the training room at this time of day, doing combat training with the other Protection Officers, otherwise Tierney was certain he would have some inappropriate comment to make about the various ways he knew to make her feel better.

"It is nearly time for shift change anyway," said Commander Arrat, who had moved from her chair to the space below them, where Tierney would have fallen. "Do you need an escort to your lodge?"

"No, no, don't do that," said Tierney, slowly standing up. "I still have to grab some dinner."

"Second Elic will have someone bring a meal to your lodge," said the commander, nodding at Elic, who instantly began speaking into her sleeve.

"Thank you," Tierney said, both to the commander and Elic. Smiling at Hoff, she said, "And thank you, too. I don't think that fall would have agreed with me." It was only about a seven-foot drop, but the iron floor and steel walls certainly could have done some damage to Tierney's very non-metallic body.

The packaged meal was already in front of her door by the time she arrived. When she sat down to eat, however, she found she had no appetite, so she tried to work. The Relicans had given her one of their tablets -- basically a clipboard wrapped in the same material the mechasuits were made of -- but she preferred using her own laptop. Luckily someone in Trajectory, which included the engineering department, was able to assemble an adaptor for her power supply so she could charge her computer without it blowing up from the ship's foreign energy voltage.

Quickly she discovered that she was still too distracted, so she called her family, and was finally able to calm her anxious mind by pretending she was there with them. Afterward she successfully lost herself for a few hours in her work, reading notes from her conversations with the governors and turning them into action plans for the following day.

She woke up in a panic, her laptop dangerously close to falling off the bed. Her mind immediately began to race with the thoughts she'd been trying so hard all night to ignore. Shock and guilt and fear whipped around inside of her until even pacing her room barefoot -- a trick she'd learned from Nelle -- wasn't enough to calm her. She needed to move, to work through this pressure that was threatening to swallow her whole.

The cylinder on the Relican clock was almost entirely purple, with just a sliver of pale, icy blue at the top. That meant it was just past two in the morning -- although the Relicans had a 25-hour day, so in Earth time that meant it was...

Tierney groaned, unable to do the math that early in the morning. Throwing on some gym shorts and a tank top, she jogged to the training room, passing no one on the way. Inlan had said that it was open all night, although rarely used after ten, which was when all the Irral crew who weren't working overnight shifts usually went to sleep. Pushing open the door, she indeed found the training room empty.

About the size of a basketball court, the training room was set up with the exercise equipment in the back half, an empty space in the front half for combat training, and a running track around the edge. Tierney started towards the elliptical, but then stopped. Running was too mindless. She needed more of a distraction. Walking around the room, she tried to find something that would work. Most of the equipment was laden with weights and unsafe for her to use, and those she could manage weren't challenging enough to keep her mind off of the tornado of emotions that was making her heart pound in her chest.

She was about to give up when she looked back at the open area. In the mornings, she'd seen Squad members practicing their fighting moves against each other there. But one time there hadn't been anyone to partner with, so the Relican had initiated some sort of program and created a virtual partner.

Tierney walked over to the mats and stood in the center, wondering how to activate it. As usual, there was no obvious control panel, since the Relicans would use their mechasuits to call up the program. But as she scanned the wall, she saw the white Relican Squad insignia and went over to it. The panel opened just like the communications interface in her bedroom, and soon she was staring at three rows of buttons. The top row had only one button, while the other two rows each had six buttons. At least everything was labeled... in Relican. She really needed to learn this language.

"I'm working on it," she muttered. Praying she wasn't inadvertently activating a self-destruct sequence, she pressed the button in the top row.

The lights in the combat training area dimmed. She pressed the same button, and the lights dimmed further. Another press darkened the space completely, while pushing it once more brought the lights back to their original brightness.

"Okay. That squiggle with the triangle-looking thing means lights. Got it."

Hoping the next row was equally as innocuous, she pressed the first button. Blue beams of light shot out from the walls and ceiling, carving the form of a Relican from thin air. Soon all the blue light was gone, except for the one from the ceiling, and a silver Relican stood before her.

He looked as real as anyone else on the ship, except for the tight blue mechasuit that held a faint glow under the light from above. His stiff posture was the only other tell that he wasn't alive. He was too still, unblinking, with his hands at his sides. His chest didn't rise and fall with breath.

Tierney walked over and waited for something to happen, but all her partner did was stand there silently. So she went back to the panel and pressed the second button in the middle row. More blue light shot out from the walls and soon there were two fake Relicans ready to spar with her.

"I don't think so," she said, pushing the button again and making the second disappear. She'd taken self-defense classes for about a year right after she'd broken up with Jonas, but she was nowhere near experienced enough to try and fend off two opponents.

The first button in the last row activated the remaining Relican. He looked at her and gave a slight bow, then assumed a fighting stance that looked like some kind of karate.

"I'm a beginner," she said. He didn't reply, or show any indication that he'd heard her.

"Alright." She stepped onto the mats and took a similar pose. "Here goes."

The Relican seemed to be waiting for her to strike first, so, feeling a little silly, and grateful that no one was around to see, she moved in and punched at his hands, trying to get them out of the way so she could reach his chest. Her opponent grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward, using her own momentum to make her stumble.

One of the first things she'd learned in her self-defense class was how to roll when she fell, using the movement to stand up again quickly. They'd practiced it for the first ten minutes of every class, and now, even four years later, she was surprised to find that lesson had stuck with her. She was up on her feet immediately.

Her opponent had gone rigid, his eyes glowing white. She thought she'd somehow broken it, when a moment later he returned to normal and came at her. She took her ready stance, but he was too quick, and landed a punch on her chest. The blow was lighter than she expected, and she only stumbled back a little, but he was already advancing with another, although moving much more slowly this time.

She was able to dodge his punch, and again found her body remembering the movements it had been taught. Grabbing his extended wrist, she pulled it down and across her body until the Relican was hunched over, then struck at his now rigid elbow with her free hand. As she'd done in her self-defense class, she didn't punch hard, stopping once she made contact, then letting go and quickly moving out of arm's length and retaking her ready stance.

This was just what she needed. She was able to lose herself to the motions, but her mind had to stay on task to anticipate and respond to the Relican's actions. Watching him also taught her some new moves, which she in turn tried out on him. Though her body ached, and her hair and shirt were sticky with sweat, she felt better than she had in days.

She'd just landed her first kick to the Relican's chest when she heard the metal clang of the door echo in the empty training room. A silver Relican, carrying something long and thin, was walking in, but she only got a glimpse of him before her opponent took advantage of her distraction and knocked her off her feet with a sweep kick.

"Okay, okay," she said, rolling over and getting back up. She was just taking her ready stance when the person who had entered the room moved back into view, just on the outskirts of the mats.

"Tausson!" She ran towards him, but a blow to her side made her stumble, though she managed to stay on her feet.

"Mulek!" Tausson shouted. Her partner ceased his advance mid-stride.

Tierney took another step towards Tausson, but paused when she saw him unsheathing the sword he'd been carrying. As long as his entire arm, it was at least four inches wide with rippled edges that reminded Tierney of ocean waves.

"May I join you?" he asked with a smile, then began entering something in his mechasuit.

"Not with that thing," Tierney said, pointing at his sword.

The walls and ceiling flashed blue, and then there was another Relican opponent, this one far on the other side of the sparring area. On each of its hands was a metal mitt: one with a long hook, and the other covered in deadly spikes.

"What are those?" she asked, eyeing the medieval weaponry.

"Rasmus's favorite weapon, though it's no match for this." Tausson held up his sword, then moved to stand opposite his partner. "Ready?" he asked her.

Although this wasn't exactly the physical activity she'd pictured the two of them engaging in when they next saw each other, the idea of sparring side by side was obviously one he enjoyed, and she liked seeing him smile.

"Sure," she said.

"Bada!" he yelled, and his opponent came at him with such speed that Tierney could hardly see its hands through the motion. Tausson clearly could, however, and in one graceful movement he avoided the swipe of the hook, and raised his sword to meet the metal spikes with a crash.

Tierney was so distracted by Tausson that she nearly forgot about her own partner, but a flash of movement caught her eye in time to avoid a kick to the head. Her opponent was definitely moving far slower than Tausson's, and at first she found it difficult to concentrate and move freely with him so close. But eventually the clanging of metal on metal receded to the background, and she once again lost herself to the rhythm of the match.

She'd just been knocked off her feet and was about to jump back up when out of the corner of her eye she saw her partner coming for her again. Instead of standing up, she stayed down, and swept her leg across the mat. The hologram, though it had been silent all night, cried out as its feet were knocked out from underneath it. As it fell to the ground, Tierney realized what she'd done.

"Sorry!" she said, smiling at Tausson's shocked expression. "I thought you were him."

Tausson reached a hand up to her, and she started to help him up, but instead he tugged down and pulled her on top of him.

"Hey!" she laughed, propping herself up with a hand on either side of his head. "I was trying to help you."

"Only after you felled me," he said. "What do you call that falling roll move? I might steal that."

"Oh, I don't remember, some technical name like..." she smiled down at him, "a falling roll."

He smiled up at her in return, his silver face darker than normal, flushed from exertion. The scent of metal that was usually faint on him was more noticeable. "Who showed you how to use the Jovi?"

The last word didn't translate. "Jovi? You mean him?" She nodded at her opponent, who was now stiff and rigid, his hands at his sides.

"Squad," answered Tausson. He tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear that had fallen out of her bun. The simple touch sent a shiver of pleasure through her body and straight to her core. She sat up, putting some distance between her lips and his, but ended up straddling his rock hard stomach. Blood rushed to her cheeks as she realized this was the same position she'd been in when they'd last made love.

Freaking Aspri, she thought, pushing aside all thoughts of grinding against him to relieve the pressure building between her thighs.

"No one showed me," she said, sliding off and sitting beside him. "I found the control panel and figured it out."

"You're lucky you set it on the custom session. Your partner was continuously analyzing your skill level and adjusting to be an adequate match."

He stayed on his back, looking up at her. "Why are you here?" he asked.

"I needed to get away from myself for a little bit. My brain was working against itself. You?"

He rolled onto his side and pulled off his gloves, then lightly ran a bare finger up and down her calf. Shocks of electric desire pulsed through her, shortening her breath.

"I'm confined to my lodge for isolation for two more days, so I can only come here to train at night." He watched his finger as he spoke, and she did the same, mesmerized as he traced up and around her knee. A single finger became his hand, his cool palm traveling up her thigh, gliding gracefully until it rested on her hip.

Now he was watching her, and Tierney could hardly breathe at the hunger in his eyes.

"Aspri doesn't like it," he said, pushing himself up and leaning in until his lips were near hers, "but he won't think anything of my readings."

It was all the invitation she needed. Her lips were on his, and her body sang with joy. She tasted Tausson, metallic and salty, on her tongue. Tausson's hands were on her, slipping beneath her shirt, pulling it over her head

He was here. He was here and holding her as if she were his life line, rather than the other way around. Any fears she'd suffered regarding his commitment to her faded, and she thought of nothing but the way his hard body felt against her soft skin.

Keeping her mouth on his, she slowly lay back, bringing him with her. She wrapped her legs around him, letting his heavy weight press down and give some ease to her aching core.

He whispered something in Relican into her ear, and she realized that his translator wasn't working. He'd already started taking his mechasuit off. Tierney's hands slid down his chest, tracing the lines of his chiseled muscles. Following the path of skin that his loosened uniform revealed, her hands journeyed lower, seeking out the tall, stiff sword that was already fighting to answer the call of her throbbing mound.

The clang of metal on metal echoed through the room, through Tierney's ears, through her heart. She couldn't move, paralyzed by fear, disbelief, guilt. Tausson was quicker, rolling off of her and pulling his partially removed uniform back up.

But he wasn't quick enough.

The door to the training room swung open, and a Relican in a white mechasuit stepped in.