Six Billion Credit Rent Boy - 4. Chapter 4

“I’m not going.”

“And I thought you hated it here.”

“I do.”

“Then why don’t you want to come with me?”

Hani glared over the top of his knees at his latest ‘handler’. This one had been sent by the United Federation high command with the instruction that he was to be brought to headquarters. Hani didn’t like him.

“Because I am not some toy or piece of equipment they can just order to have moved around from ‘a’ to ‘b’!” Hani’s tail lashed around him, knocking a small lamp to the floor with a distinctive smash. “They don’t own me!”

“Actually they do.” The handler rolled his eyes. “They paid for you, they created you, and they own you. Now come along. We’re going to miss the shuttle if you sulk any longer.”

Hani growled, and low unfriendly rumble deep in his skinny chest.

“And I’ve read enough about species rights to know otherwise. I’m a sentient creature. They don’t own me!”

“Why don’t you argue that to them when you get there?” Hani could smell the frustration rising in his human companion. “You can’t stay here.”

That at least was true, and Hani reluctantly uncurled himself from the bunk and stood. He couldn’t stay at the base on Triden-A, because he had failed basic training, and he was getting sick of being given orders of where to go, when to eat, and when to sleep. He had come to the base with one small bag containing a reading tablet and the two sets of clothes he owned, and he re-packed these before following his handler from the dorm. He wouldn’t miss the place at all.

The shuttle was boxy and grey and pretty similar to the one which had brought him in a month previously. Hani smiled as he took his seat.

“Are we going back on the Kerouac?” He asked excitedly. Phelps was the only person Hani could even claim to have a connection to, let alone label as a ‘friend’, and the idea of seeing him again made a sweet, hot sensation spread through the boy’s chest.

“No. We will take the shuttle to the Vonnegut space hub, and from there we’ll pick up the ship heading for Montressor. We’ll need to change again before we reach the high command. Should take about four days.”

Hani’s tail dropped, and stopped twitching, and unconsciously he folded down his ears. The idea of four days on board any number of space ships with no company but this man who didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in him in any context was wholly depressing. Hani had wanted to see Phelps again. It had been so safe and comforting to be curled up in the warm space in Phelps’s bed and sleep. No amount of physical closeness, like what he had experienced in the showers, could make up for that feeling. Hani didn’t have a name for the sensation which he longed for. He only knew that he wanted it again.

The Vonnegut space hub had been built during the Nouveau Renaissance, and while the outside of the disc shaped hub was functional and sleek in its design, and the inside was a completely different matter. Some said the designer had been insane, but whatever his mental state, the place was beautiful: architecture made of sinuous lines; sections of window made to look like stained glass, showing figures of beautiful men and women with voluptuous hair; flowers and leaves carved into patterned sections of the floor; and colour everywhere, green and gold, reds, pinks, purples and blues. Hani stared in wonder.

“I have to go find out what gate we need to get to.” The handler pointed to the exact spot where Hani stood. “Stay here and do not move.”

“But-”

“Stay here!” The man commanded. “And don’t talk to anyone.”

Hani exhaled heavily as his handler walked away. He flicked his tail in annoyance. To be told to ‘stay’ like a child was irritating. More than that, there was a hot ball of anger and shame in his chest. For a moment he felt like he had after he’d had sex the first time, and he didn’t like it at all. Hani stared at the floor, his tail slashing back and forth angrily.

His ears followed the sounds of people around the hub, and when he looked up all his attention was drawn suddenly to a boy who looked like him. Hani stared. The other boy had ears and a tail, just like his own, except that the fur was bluish, and he was holding the hand of a taller man with dark hair, smiling happily. Hani blinked, hardly daring to believe what he saw, and without a second thought, sprang away from where he stood, trying to get to the kid who laughed as his companion tickled him quickly. Hani lost sight of them for a moment, turned a corner, and ran into someone. He got up babbling incoherently, and when he looked again for the boy and his friends, they were gone. He snarled.

Glancing around the hub, Hani shivered. The architecture was beautiful, but it was all the same, and he couldn’t orientate himself. He spun, eyes searching for the direction he’d come from, but he was lost.

“Oh wow. Look Daillon, his fur is lovely.”

Hani blinked and stopped, flicking an ear in the direction of the speech.

“It’s not as beautiful as yours, babe.”

“Flatterer.” The boy with the blue ears smiled, revealing short white fangs. “Hi there. Who did your work? It’s flawless.”

Hani pricked up his ears and wrapped the end of his tail around one wrist quickly. The other boy’s tail simply swayed behind him.

“Are you on the Marquis flight too?”

“Umm.”

“First time at the hub?” The man called Daillon smiled. “Come on, it’s this way. You can’t miss the Marquis. She’s only the most beautiful ship in the black.”

Hani followed them through the space hub and the other boy grinned over his shoulder in delight.

“I’ve never been to the Angel Constellation before. I hope that Metrixa-4 is as beautiful as everyone says.”

“It is, babe. I promise.” They reached a gate like the one through which Hani had walked to get into the Vonnegut hub. Daillon smiled at him. “I’m sure we’ll see you around bud.”

“Bye!” The other cat-eared and tailed boy waved. “Come find us sometime.”

Hani watched them walk away, and only then was he distracted by looking up. The Marquis was certainly a very different ship from those he had been on before. The ceiling vaulted to a great height and everywhere he looked there was gold. Every pillar and support was carved with figures, angels, demons, animals, gargoyles and peoples, and most of them were in some state of undress. Thick red drapes hung in swathes from every window and balustrade, and Hani watched a beautiful couple walking up a wide sweeping staircase, nodding to a girl in richly embroidered robes who was carrying a tray of drinks. Even though Hani had very little concept of money, beyond that which he had read about, he had the feeling everything he could see was expensive.

There was a soft chiming tone and then a soothing voice came over the intercom.

“Welcome aboard the Marquis. The ship will be departing for Metrixa-4 in five minutes. There are eighty restaurants between level two and level ten and these will open once the ship has entered warp. We will arrive on the planet in approximately forty minutes and will spend the night on the Laguna Ferrera to watch the sunset. Have a wonderful stay.”

Hani turned back to the door through which he had come, but it was shut, and the seal was being inspected by a man dressed in a sharply cut grey outfit. As Hani watched he tapped a code into the door, pressed his ear piece and nodded. The ship was readying for take-off, and whatever else Hani’s plans might have been if he had stayed with his handler, he was going to be staying on the Marquis. Trying to get off the ship now made no logical sense. With nothing else to do, and alone without a guide for the first time ever, Hani went for a walk.

*

“How was your session?” Hani looked up from his reading tablet as his roommate entered.

Delilah shrugged and smiled, sitting down to pull off her long, impossibly high heeled boots. There were certain upsides to living with an android, Hani had discovered, like the fact he got to eat whatever he liked and he didn’t have to share his food, and certain downsides to living with an android who had been repurposed as a sex worker.

“To think…” Delilah sighed heavily, an affectation she had picked up from working around humans. “I used to be a model, dahling. I used to wear shoes like that down catwalks and have people capture my image. Now I just walk from here to any of a few dozen rooms and no one looks twice.”

Hani rolled his eyes. Everybody looked at least twice when Delilah walked past, because she walked like she owned the world, and she was incredibly, strangely, beautiful.

That first day, when Hani had gone for his walk, he hadn’t a clue what he was doing, or where he was going. Before the ship had even completed its warp along the interspace highway, he had found himself sitting in a bar decorated like a boudoir, sipping gingerly at a glass containing something extremely alcoholic, and chatting with Delilah. Or rather, Delilah had talked, mostly Hani had just sat there, nodded and smiled. Delilah had reached out, petted his ears and called him cute.

“So what are you doing on board? Trying to earn back all the credits you spent getting such lovely bio-mech prosthetics?”

“Huh?”

“Your ears and that lovely tail hun. I have to say I’ve never seen any that are so natural looking and reactive. They must have been expensive.”

Hani nodded. He had heard enough about how much he had cost the United Federation.

“Well, at least you found me. I can get you registered with the agency and put you on the books. Cute little thing like you,” she smiled softly, “you’ll pay off all your debts in no time.”

So Delilah had taken him in. As soon as they got to Metrixa-4, she had received a call that her services were needed and she had taken him along with her to her apartments. Delilah’s place was a mess, but it was a clean mess, and there were feathers, silks, overstuffed armchairs and thousands of throw cushions.

“Make yourself at home.” Delilah had stripped as she spoke. “Actually, you might as well stay here. I have a spare room.”

Hani had stared at her, or, not her. Delilah looked down at her small pink cock and chuckled.

“I used to be a model sweetie, when the fashions were all for skinny androgynous types. Then a few years ago that bastard Verruci decided the world needed more curvy girls with big tits and wide child-bearing hips and I got retired. The boys in the workshop gave me a few modifications to my internal organs, so now I work here.” The naked hermaphroditic figure had vanished into her room and emerged again in a pair of ruffled silk panties and holding a very short dress. “And I lurve what I do. Zip me up please dahling.”

Hani obliged, but stared as he drew up the zipper, at the little imprints on the back of Delilah’s neck. He had read all about androids while he had been bored one day at the base on Triden-A, but he hadn’t ever met one before. The only evidence Delilah wasn’t a ‘real’ human was the little imprint of a serial code just below her hairline.

“People pay you for having sex?” The idea in theory was not alien to him, but Hani couldn’t help but feel slightly sickened at the prospect.

“Oh hunny!” Dalilah ruffled his ears again. “People pay us for bein’ purdy. Sex is just how they show their appreciation for how hawt we are.”

So Delilah had gone to go and see her client and left Hani in her home to wonder what on earth it was he was going to do. He had many, many skills, but Delilah said the one people desired most was the way he moved his hips when he walked. Until she said it, Hani hadn’t even realised he was doing it. Delilah had signed him up with the agency from the com hub in her apartment and they had sat in a very swanky bar on the third deck as the ship sailed ponderously over the Laguna Ferrera. When the sinking orb of the yellow sun hit the water, the whole scene changed from soft blue to a dramatic purple.

“It’s so pretty.”

“Happens every day.” Delilah had replied. “There are plenty of beautiful sights on this planet, and others in the Angel constellation. We are lucky people who get to cruise out here. Tickets aren’t cheap.”

Hani nodded, but his attention wasn’t fully on the conversation, one ear turned back to the main seating area of the restaurant. Someone else had turned their attention to him.

“There is a man watching me.” Hani muttered, sipping his second ever alcoholic drink. Even though Delilah had said the liquor was strong, Hani didn’t feel any different.

“Yes.” Delilah smiled. “I expect any minute now he’ll walk over here and ask for you. He’ll be your first client.”

“What do I do?” Hani had gulped.

“You do whatever he wants you to. And have fun.”

He didn’t listen when the man told him his name, or ask questions when he followed him. He did what he was asked to, and when the stranger had fallen to his knees to worship Hani’s slender body, the thrill of power curled around the hot strange feeling in his chest made him smile. As his client had laid him on the bed, pushed his legs apart, and entered him in one forceful thrust, Hani had remembered what the two soldiers had said in the locker room. He had a body worth paying for.

*

Hani hooked his thumbs into his underwear and pulled the soft fabric slowly down his hips. He was half hard, which would do since his client was pretty much interested in the view of his tail. Hani turned back his ears to better hear what was being said, and followed the instruction to bend over and present himself. He waved his tail in a distracting manner, and groaned more in memory of pleasure than actual sensation as his body was invaded.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like the new job in which he had found himself. It was just some clients were much more fun than others. And more than that, there wasn’t a single one of them who treated him like an actual person – not even as much as his two soldier friends had done. He was a house pet, a toy, a slave, an opinion less companion. Yes, more please, harder: they were his main stock in trade. No one ever wanted to know what he thought of anything, not even something as mundane as the weather. Hani was bored.

After his session he got changed into non-work clothes consisting of a pair of fitted black trousers with a hole cut for his tail and a bright blue top, and went for a walk on the viewing deck. The Marquis had many windows, usually lavished with swathes of fabric and a florid overabundance of carvings and gold leaf. The viewing deck was right at the bottom of the ship and was almost entirely see-through. Hani wandered along, past those who sat on comfortable recliners watching the planet turning rather closely below them, walking as well through the passages of his own mind.

He liked a lot of things about his life: Delilah was a fun roommate, and he had friends among some of the other crew on board, but generally it was lonely in his head. He wasn’t great at talking to people, because he had so little experience, and he had thought it best not to divulge the information that he was in fact, rather than being a human with bio-mechanical appendages, a new ultra-expensive designer weapon. He was a failed weapon sure enough, but costly nonetheless. No one would understand he had been created, made not born, and yet was not an android. There was no one in the solar system who would fully understand, except perhaps Sergeant Major Phelps.

Hani had found his thoughts circling back to the tall, strong, military man more and more often as of late, and he couldn’t help but wonder what it meant.

“Hey stranger.” A familiar voice made him look up. Hani flicked quickly through his visual memory and smiled at Daillon, the companion of the boy with the fake but functional bluish ears and tail. “You look thoughtful. Not enjoying the view?”

“It’s very colourful.” Hani smiled. They were back over the coast of Laguna Ferrera, and though the water was still a soft pale blue this early in the afternoon, where the sea met the red earth the line of white foam was contrastingly pretty. “How are you?”

“I’m well, it’s been a good cruise. Are you staying on the ship for the next trip?”

“I don’t know.” Hani flicked back his ears. “It’s nice here…”

“But?” Daillon arched an eyebrow at him. “That was the most unfinished sentence I’ve ever heard. Come, sit, talk to me.”

Hani sat down in the empty chair and looked around furtively.

“Kial’s not here. He went for a swim on the lido deck.”

“He likes to swim?”

“You’re a bit more cat than he is, eh?” Daillon grinned. “I saw you got signed up with the agency. You must have earned a lot on this trip.”

“I suppose so.” Hani knew there were enough credits in his account to keep him fed and watered and to buy him a flight to pretty much anywhere in the solar system he might want. “Um… do you…?” Hani wasn’t sure how to finish his question, but Daillon seemed to know exactly what he meant.

“Do I pay Kial for his time? No. I did just once. We met in a bar when he was working and went back to my hotel. After an hour of talking I knew I never wanted him to leave.” Daillon smiled softly, looking at his memories. “We’ve been together four years now.”

“That must be nice.” Hani stared out at the world turning ponderously below them. He could barely imagine the idea of having someone, a person who cared about him who would be there for him, and who smiled when they thought about him in the way Daillon was doing as he thought about his boy. “I’m lonely.”

“I know.” Daillon touched his shoulder, and his hand was warm. “There’s no cure for that in the ‘verse except to find a person who you want to spend your time with, someone who cares about you.”

Hani sniffed, and watched the tip of his tail flicking back and forth. He felt angry, upset, frustrated, and sad. The ball of emotions wrapped up together in his throat and made it hard to think. He curled up into a ball and wrapped his arms and tail around his knees, ears pressed flat back into his hair.

The Marquis would soon be on its way back to the Vonnegut space hub, and Hani couldn’t bear the idea of staying on the ship for another trip to continue with the work he was doing now. He had no idea what else he was any good at, no idea if the United Federation were still even looking for him, and no clue where else he could go. Daillon reached out, and petted him gently.

“Hush… it’s alright. There’s someone for everyone in this big wide galaxy. You’ll find him.”

“Where do you look?”

Daillon smiled kindly.

“If we knew the answer to that, there wouldn’t be so many people searching. Cheer up kid, you’ll find someone.” Daillon nodded to him as he stood, and turned to walk away. Just as Hani thought the man might have forgotten about him, he glanced over his shoulder. “There must be somebody in your past that you miss.” And then he was gone.

Hani stayed on the viewing deck as it emptied, people going for dinner in one of the many restaurants as the sun started to sink, and so he had an unrivalled view of the moment when the Laguna Ferrera went purple. Whatever he told anyone else, Hani still thought it was beautiful.

What Daillon said stuck in his mind, but when he looked around his head, there was hardly anyone there. He didn’t really know anyone.

Except that I never felt more warm or safe than tucked up in Phelps’s bed.

Hani blinked, he had never talked to himself before.

That’s not so important right now. His brain muttered. Do you want to spend the foreseeable future fucking strangers for money?

Hani knew the answer immediately.

But what if he doesn’t want me? The idea of seeing Phelps again made his pulse quicken, but the idea of being sent away made his skull tighten. He didn’t want to find out the only person he could even remotely claim to care about hadn’t thought about him in three months.

Unless you find out, you’ll never know.