Amanda's Amorous Aliens (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (10 page)

“It’s an artificial intelligence,” Sektannen said, trying to reassure their woman despite the information he’d found. “It’s not capable of making a decision like that. We just need to find the reason for it.”

“So where do we start?” Amanda asked brightly. He suspected that she was trying to believe what he’d told her, even if the evidence suggested otherwise. “Can you ask To’huto?”

“Not without bringing him online, and until I know why it did what it did I don’t really want the computer running the ship.”

“Can you isolate it? Sort of take it off the network?”

“Not with the equipment we have,” Karriak said with a shake of his head. “I’ve already gone looking for the backup units—they’re sort of a portable casing for a computer program like To’huto’s—but it would appear that they’re not on the ship. They were on the manifesto, but don’t seem to have been loaded. Essentially, we would need to travel back to our own time to get the right hardware to start To’huto offline, but to do that we need to bring To’huto online first and give it back control of the ship.”

“I might have an idea,” Amanda said, twisting her lips into a cute sort of half smile. She glanced at her nakedness. “But first…can I borrow some clothes?”

* * * *

Amanda needed to lean into the cockpit of her vessel to reach her laptop computer. The trouble was that only after several minutes of intense negotiations the men had finally offered her a shirt to cover her body—a shirt that barely reached the top of her thighs when she was stranding straight up. Bending over was going to put
everything
on display.

Both men smirked at her predicament, but neither offered to help.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Karriak said with a soft laugh. “We promise not to look…much.”

She giggled at his lascivious grin and decided that she was probably being silly. She hadn’t squirmed in embarrassment when they’d had her spread over the bench earlier. She wasn’t surprised to feel warm hands caress her ass and moaned as they both pressed sucking kisses to her cheeks. She gasped at the slight sting of pain, giggling again when she realized that they’d both left love bites on her ass.

“Now it’s perfect,” Karriak said as he helped her to stand.

“How so?” she asked, rubbing over the soft stings, pretending to be aggrieved but secretly pleased by their possessive behavior.

“Now you’re ours,” Sektannen said with a wide grin, “forever.”

She laughed again, but a small part of her wondered if she’d somehow stumbled into a marriage contract with aliens. She could almost hear her mother’s horrified questions—“You let two men kiss your ass? And
now
you’re married?”

But being theirs forever suddenly seemed like a terrific idea.

“Come on, sweet cheeks,” Karriak said, landing a playful slap on her bottom, “let’s get this done.”

The unintentional reminder of the men she’d worked with in the year 2018 was like a bucket of cold water dumped over her head. She’d worked so hard to be the best at everything she’d ever done. Was she really willing to give it all up to stay with these two men? Men she barely knew?

She glanced up at Sektannen and finally realized she was looking up. “Did you guys get taller?”

“Just a little,” Karriak said with a grin, “but with the lower oxygen levels it should slow down our next telkobar.”

Next?

“Whoa, time out,” she said, putting her laptop safely onto the bench before she dropped the damn thing. “Next telkobar? As in that thing you did before when one giant became two large men?”

“Yes,” Sektannen said, glaring just a little at his brother. Apparently it was something they hadn’t planned on discussing with her. Considering she was currently sleeping with both of them, she might have appreciated a heads-up.

“How many times?”

“For telkobar?”

She nodded, trying not to panic
. Two times two is four. Four times two is eight. Eight times two…does not bear thinking about!

“Only once more,” Sektannen said, lifting his wrist to show her the arrow-type tattoo she’d noticed earlier. “Like a compass, one arrow for each brother.”

“So there’ll only be four of you?” she asked, trying not to think about the compass she had on the wall at home that had not only north, south, east, and west, but also northwest, north-northwest…

“Only four,” Karriak said with a reassuring smile.

“What will the other two do when they arrive?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure exactly what I mean. I just…well, I’m sleeping with you two. Won’t that be a little embarrassing for them?” Inside her head she kind of knew that her logic was flawed, but she couldn’t quite grasp the concept of four men all looking, sounding, and thinking like the two she was considering giving up her career to stay with.

“Breathe, beautiful,” Sektannen said as he wrapped his arms around her. “We retain the memories. You already know that.” He took a deep breath and ran his fingers through her hair. “Essentially, you are already sleeping with four men. We just happen to only be in two bodies at the moment.”

“So when you next go through telkobar…” She left the thought unsaid, but both men smiled in answer.

Holy fuck!

* * * *

Karriak could see that their woman was having trouble processing all that their final telkobar meant for her. Thankfully, with the oxygen levels much lower, but still comfortable enough for humans, their next split should be several months away. Amanda would have a good long while to get used to the idea.

He picked up the computer that she had retrieved from her vessel and tried to figure out how to turn it on. At first he’d thought it was a data tablet similar to the ones he and Sektannen used online, but on closer inspection it seemed somehow split down the middle—rather ironic considering the current subject matter.

“How does this work?” he asked Amanda.

“Oh, sorry,” she said as she moved out of Sektannen’s embrace. Karriak handed her the computer and watched as she set it on the bench, and opened it up. She pressed a button and he waited, fascinated as the computer seemed to take forever before turning on. “I doubt this is compatible with To’huto the way it is, but if we could somehow transfer the executable file onto a backup disc and then link it to my laptop in a physical way, it will at least give us a chance to communicate with To’h without unleashing him onto your network.”

Sektannen and Karriak both smiled. It was a similar sort of thing that they would have done if they’d brought the right equipment with them. Karriak made a mental note to double-check the inclusion of something similar in their next mission. How they hadn’t been loaded with everything else was still a mystery—one he intended to investigate when they got home. In the meanwhile, however, opening To’huto’s program on Amanda’s computer just might work.

“Okay,” he said, turning toward the main computer hub. “I’ll put a copy of To’huto onto a portable data block, and you two can try to figure out how to make a cable compatible between both.”

Sektannen laughed when he apparently realized Karriak was taking the easier task for himself, but didn’t object.

* * * *

It very literally took hours to make, but it seemed that they’d finally managed to fashion a type of USB plug to link her laptop to the Kobarian technology.

Sektannen gave her a tight smile. If it didn’t work this time she wasn’t sure what to try next, but it had been rather exhilarating to tackle a problem she’d never even considered, let alone encountered, before.

The screen filled quickly, flashing with symbols and squiggles that she couldn’t even hope to understand in the brief glimpse she was given. She was a little surprised to find Sektannen and Karriak both smiling. “What’s it doing?”

“Sorry,” Karriak said quickly, “it’s flashing up error reports as it fails to find the ship’s systems To’h is supposed to monitor and control.” She must have looked confused, because he added, “That’s actually a good thing. It means To’h is definitely in there.”

She smiled worriedly, her memory flashing back to all of those horror movies where the computer was the real culprit.

“Karriak-Sektannen,” a strangely melodic voice said via the laptop’s speakers, “I am in need of your assistance. Please confirm that the ship’s network is working correctly.”

“It’s all right, To’h,” Sektannen said, leaning just a little closer to the tiny microphone hole near the camera. “We took you offline to do some diagnostics. It appears that you’ve been malfunctioning.”

“Nonsense,” the computer said dismissively. “I do not malfunction.”

“Then why did you create a rift in time to bring Amanda here?”

“Oh, so you know about that, then?” To’huto asked in an unrepentant tone.

“We also know that you changed the navigational files to make us believe we were hovering over the area where the Ardipithecus ramidus supposedly lived.”

“Yes, well, it was necessary,” the computer said. “Otherwise Amanda wouldn’t have met you for another 4.4 million years.”

“I would have met them anyway?” Amanda asked as her heart climbed into her throat. “When? What year?”

“You met Kar, Riak, Sek, and Tannen the year you turned seventy-one.”

“That’s more than forty years from now.” She shook her head sharply. “Um, forty years from when I was before I was here.”

“How do you know this, To’h?” Sektannen asked. “Karriak-Sektannen purchased your program in our own time. It would have been the equivalent of the Earth year 2027. That’s long before Amanda would turn seventy-one.”

The computer made a sound of annoyance. “Amanda, do I have your permission to explain this?”

“My permission?” she asked with a squawk.
What the hell?

“Yes, Amanda Hasbro,
your
permission,” the computer said again in as close to an exasperated voice as her state-of-the-art-yet-primitive laptop would allow.

“Why?”

“Because you are the one who created me.”

Because you are the one who created me.

The words seemed to bounce around in Amanda’s head over and over.

“To’huto, please explain,” Sektannen demanded.

“Not until I have my creator’s permission.”

Karriak and Sektannen both turned to her. “Of course,” she said quickly, “you have my permission to tell us anything.”

“Thank you, Amanda Hasbro.” The computer seemed to take its time to prepare an explanation, and then after a soft sound that she recognized as one common to her computer’s switch-on sound, it began. “Once upon a time in a land far f—”

“To’h!” both Karriak and Sektannen shouted at the same time.

“Oh, all right,” the computer said, sounding miffed. “Don’t blame me if I was programmed with a sense of humor. That would be my creator’s fault.”

Amanda shrugged her shoulders and gave both men a wry smile. “I’ll remember not to next time. Please continue, To’h…without the fairy-tale beginning.”

“Fine,” the computer said in a voice that practically made the word sound insulting. If she did create this program she’d certainly gone heavy on the attitude. “Amanda Hasbro met Kar, Riak, Sek, and Tannen in the Earth year 2062. She was seventy-one and they were approximately, by human standards, about sixty-five. They married and lived together happily for 9.267 years before three of the brothers were killed in a devastating accident.”

* * * *

Sektannen felt his throat close over—not at the thought of his own death, but rather at the fear of being the one left behind. To have remained close enough to his brothers to all marry the same woman many, many years from now, losing them in the blink of an eye would have been devastating. And for a woman who’d loved and accepted four men into her life it must have been beyond horrific to lose three in an accident and the fourth to depression.

He could completely understand why she would try to change their history, and it was very easy to believe he would have loved her no matter what age they met. He pulled the woman into his arms. She’d given them all a second chance and he planned to grasp every moment.

* * * *

Karriak swallowed hard and tried to follow the computer’s rather disorganized explanation. They’d met and loved Amanda in a different time and place? “Why now, To’h? Why here?”

“My creator did not explain why she did it.”

He glanced at Amanda, wondering if the woman she was now would be able to interpret the actions of the woman she might never now become.

“To’h, did I say anything? Anything at all about my feelings for these men?”

“Only that you missed them and had always wished you’d met them when you were younger.”

Amanda smiled slightly. “I suppose that makes sense. If I didn’t meet you until I was in my seventies it means I probably spent a lot of time alone. I’ve always been pretty focused on my career.”

“Always?” Karriak asked as his chest tightened to the point that he could barely breathe. She nodded absently as she stared at the laptop that now housed To’huto. He wanted to ignore the feeling that they were missing something important, but he had to know. “Amanda, why did you design the vessel you arrived in?”