After a filling meal, Gabriel and Madeline got transport arranged back to the Space docks. The ship looked the same as when they left of course, but now that Gabriel saw it from the air and not at a low angle he saw how large it really was. By his best estimates, it was as wide as four or five 747’s and slightly taller, though it sat lower to the ground. As they arrived Cani’s smaller ship was pulled from the ship’s dock. Its wings were folded to fit and almost scraped the sides as they pulled it out. Cani however, was nowhere to be seen so the pair made their way onboard. They were guided to Derthen’s office and knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

They opened the door, Derthen looked up and while he didn’t smile, his fur ridge rose slightly. “Hey dad,” Madeline said as they entered.

“Welcome back, did it go well?” He asked.

“Yes, we got—” Madeline began, but Derthen held up a hand.

“I don’t need to know,” He said, despite the wording, his tone wasn’t dismissive or harsh. “Even if what you want to tell me is no secret, the less that knows the better.”

“Alright,” Madeline said. “We are getting lodging arranged so we will leave the ship, probably today so we need to pack.”

Derthen nodded, “Then I wish you well, take care of yourself, and see me before you leave.” He stood and hugged his daughter. “Gabriel, a word?”

“I’ll start packing,” Madeline said and walked out, closing the door.

“Sir?” Gabriel said.

Derthen sighed, “Take care of my daughter, I would prefer that you don’t drag her around to places like the black market. But, she is as stubborn as her mother on occasion, so just try and keep her and yourself out of trouble.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll do my best.”

“No, your best way of keeping my daughter safe would be giving up on your sister or Mhadeleaine. I hope you will do neither, do your next best,” Derthen said. He even tried a human smile, which looked stiff.

Gabriel smiled back. “That I can promise.”

Derthen walked around his desk and put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder and moved towards the door. “Good, find your sister, then bring Mhadeleaine home. It’s been quite some time since she brought back a… partner? mate?” He paused and gave Gabriel a questioning look.

“Yes, sir,” Gabriel said, not sure which of the titles fit best.

“Her mother will be pleased, she has already pestered me about getting you to visit.” Derthen opened the door. “Now If you’ll excuse me, I have much work to do.”

“Um, sure,” Gabriel said as the door closed. He stood there confused for a moment before shrugging and heading off to find Madeline. She was in their room, packing bags.

“Hey, that was quick,” she said when he entered.

“Yeah, your father told me to take care of you, then visit your mother before shoving me out the door.” Gabriel grabbed his bag and began packing. He remembered that his phone from earth was still around here somewhere and went scavenging for it.

“Huh, he must like you,” Madeline said grinning.

“You sure? He said maybe two sentences and threw me out.”

“Yeah, but that’s more than most males I brought home. Usually, he stares at them and asks about their finances. What are you looking for?”

“My phone, uh, my earth pcu,” Gabriel said. Madeline opened a drawer and handed him it and Victorias.

“Here’s both.” Madeline went back to her own bag. “As I said, my father is a man of few words. If he talks about anything other than his work it is cause for celebration,” Madeline chirped.

“That so?” Gabriel pressed the power button, finding that his phone still had a little charge, but was in the red. “We got the charger for this as well right?”

“Yeah, the same drawer,” Madeline said. “Can you remember talking with dad about anything other than work or questions you asked?”

Gabriel pulled a round puck-shaped object with two buttons out of the drawer. One button was in the center, one to the side. He pushed the latter and a slot opened, inside were a connector that looked to fit his phone.

“Now that you mention it, no I don’t think I have.” Gabriel plugged his phone in and pressed the central button. the screen on his phone lit up and it started to charge.

“I remember I had to seek him out to tell him about my day or talk about anything other than academics. He isn’t a bad father, I mean he basically forced our government to escort me around when we tried to find you but getting heartfelt conversations out of him is difficult.”

“Speaking of finding me,” Gabriel said as his last clothes went into the bag. “I seem to remember you saying something about your hand when you did.” He walked over and took her left hand. Her artificial ring finger and pinkie curled around his hand.

“Yes, and they are here on Mhinos. After I woke up in the hospital, my dad had them grown, and during our transit, they were shipped here.” Madeline sighed, wiggling her prosthetics. “I’ve kinda grown used to these, I still think they’re cool. But it will be nice to have my own back.”

“I can imagine, and I agree, they are cool,” Gabriel smiled and kissed her hand.

“Maybe I’ll get lucky and we ship out before I can have the procedure?” Madeline smiled and squeezed his hand, kissing it in return.

“Is time not an issue?” Gabriel asked and pulled her close.

“Not, really. Well, I suppose it’s a money issue,” she said, running her free hand over his chest. She rubbed her cheek against his and pulled him close. As Gabriel reached around her waist moving his hands down, but before reaching her shapely posterior she pulled away. “Now help me pack, and we can get back to this– ” she gave Gabriel a very good seductive smile, “–when we get to our lodgings.” She walked over to the wardrobe and began pulling clothes.

Gabriel smiled and sighed simultaneously and walked over to help her, “Tease.”

They quickly got the rest of Madeline’s stuff packed and Gabriel shouldered both bags. “Right I think we got everything. Well except my armor.”

“Oh right, well we have to leave it. I’ll ask dad to deliver it to the new ship, wherever that one is.”

“I suppose walking out in it is not an option?” Gabriel asked, already sure of the answer.

“No, you can’t legally wear it unless you are on a ship where your status is recognized. Or involved with the Security department I suppose. We have to ask.”

“Right,” Gabriel said as they headed towards the airlock. “Should we really leave before we get somewhere to stay?”

“Good point, wouldn’t want you to carry our bags around all evening,” Madeline said chirping. “Let me talk to dad and if we still haven’t heard back from Rik’Tensel we can send a message.”

Gabriel dropped both bags and sat down on the closest couch to Derthen’s office. “Sure, take your time.”

“Thanks,” Madeline said and kissed his cheek before heading into the office.

Gabriel leaned back and picked up his still charging phone. This charger worked wonders, during the 10 minutes while they finished packing it was almost back to full charge. He unplugged it and stuffed the charger in his bag.

Then he took a deep breath and unlocked the phone. No new messages. Gabriel was thankful for that, and at the same time not. Scrolling through the old texts confirmed some of what he already suspected. He had been driving to his parent's house and had picked up Victoria on the way. However, since he didn't have any texts from after telling Victoria he was at her apartment he could not tell if they arrived or not. Sighing and suppressing a pang of nostalgia he began scrolling through his apps. He still had a lot of music, a weather app, one that kept tracks of his physical training…

“I’m an idiot,” Gabriel said to himself. He had all his physical training for the past year on his phone. And a stopwatch. He wondered where Alith and Morthri had disappeared to. He stopped one of the hired security guards. “Hey, have you seen the doctors? Morthri and Alith?”

“I think they are packing up at the clinic,” the guards said.

“Thanks,” Gabriel stood and headed off in that direction. With Deana’s arrest, he had completely forgotten the fact that the doctors hadn’t gotten off the ship. They were in the room with the others planning to get off but stayed behind.

He reached medical and knocked, Alith opened the door and performed a quick bow, “Gabriel, what brings you here?”

“Mostly the fact that I’m an idiot,” Gabriel said and stepped in. “I have a stopwatch on my phone, er, human pcu, I have my training for the entire year before I was taken documented and I happen to know that the port is exactly 3,5 millimeters.” Gabriel held out the phone for them to see. “And while editing photos, I can change the dimensions to show centimeters, you can use that right? Or measure from the screen?”

Morthri and Alith stood stunned for a moment, “Yes… yes we definitely can,” Alith said nodding rapidly. “This is fantastic news, the tests will be more accurate and we can find out what...” he trailed off.

“What?” Gabriel asked.

“Our suspicions will be easier to confirm,” Morthri said. “But before we say anything for sure, we plan to recreate your gravity using a special lab in the Union building to get better measurements, this will expedite the process.”

“Alright, I still want to know what secret you are keeping from me.” While Gabriel trusted the two doctors it still didn’t feel right to be left out.

“What we can tell you now, is that some measurements were off. This was after the first ones you did on US535. We have confirmed that it’s nothing dangerous and in fact, it’s beneficial to your health from what we can tell.” Morthri took a deep breath and sighed. “I would prefer to give you accurate data before telling you more. With you pcu we can have that prepared as early as tomorrow.”

Gabriel gave both a long look before nodding, “Alright,” he removed the passcode from his phone and showed them how to unlock and use it, along with what apps they needed. “I would like all my pictures and music to be sent to my pcu, but those are private so I want to be here for it.”

“Of course, are you willing to give the Union access to some?” Morthri asked.

“We’ll see, I have some nature pictures I wouldn't mind sharing. But I want to be here for the transfer.”

Both doctors nodded, “We will arrange it, tomorrow as well? Oh, and we will need to use the Union’s lab for this.”

“Yea, I suppose that’s fine.” Gabriel nodded again, more to confirm to himself. “Alright, I’ll see you later, call anytime if you find something.”

“Thank you,” Alith said.

Morthi gave him a polite nod as he walked out. Gabriel pondered what he could sell from his phone on the way back. He didn’t have many pictures of people, in fact, he rarely took pictures at all. He was sure Victoria had taken a selfie with his phone with him in it. But he didn’t even have a picture of his parents. He reminded himself that he used to call them every now and then and that pictures weren't his thing. Victoria probably had more, but he didn’t know how to unlock her phone.

Getting back to his bag, Madeline was nowhere to be seen. So probably still talking to her dad. Gabriel sat down again and pulled out his pcu, this time just going over letters and trying to memorize some words. And after just a few minutes of that, he got bored and switched to trying to find out how much money he had.

It took a minute or so to find the correct app, “Alright let’s see here,” Gabriel mumbled to himself. The first was a list of payments, but no numbers. “Test taken on US535, bla, bla bla,” Gabriel mumbles as he skipped over the dates, specifics, time it took, etc. Then he reached a section stating how many hours his tests and records had been worked on. He appeared to received payment depending on not only how many tests he took, but also how long the results were studied. If he read it correctly.

“Looking at anything interesting?” Madeline said. Gabriel had not even noticed her returning.

“Sort of, trying to find out how much money these tests payout.” Gabriel kept scrolling through the substantial rapport, listing results with comparisons to things Gabriel had no reference for.

“Ah, here we go,” Gabriel said as he reached the bottom, “The amount deposited to the account of Gabriel Issac Walker, based on 200 hours of combined research by Morthri Pequen and Alith Sooma, along with the tests performed–Jesus, not more padding–bla bla bla, is… ”

“Is?” Madeline asked.

“Um, how… How much did you say your father made in a year?”

“About 100,000… why?”

“And you have 10 months yeah? 35 days a month?”

“Yes?”

“Admittedly I’m not great at Station standard numbers but.” Gabriel read the numbers again. “But this says 8710 does it not?” Gabriel showed her the pcu. Madeline’s eyes widened.

“Yes, it does. Scroll more,” she said.

Gabriel scrolled down to a summary. “Oh, for fuck sake, put the summary at the top,” He complained. “Right, Morthri had worked with my tests for 147 hours with 30 credits and hour. Alith worked with him for 53, that’s 60 an hour then. And three scans and one physical test all pay out 280 each.”

“Huh, I guess we can afford shopping after all,” Madeline said.

“All this as passive income,” Gabriel blew out a long breath. “I guess being the only known alien of a new species pays out.”

“I guess so, not very reliable though. But I suppose sharing some data with the Union would pay even more.”

“Probably,” Gabriel said. “By the way, can I turn numbers into my own? Or why does only text work.”

“Numbers are usually not part of languages, but yeah, someone can probably do that for you,” Madeline said and picked up her bag. “While I talked to dad I got a message from Krihana about a place to stay. There is a nice hotel within walking distance from the Union building.”

“Great,” Gabriel said and stood up. “Are we paying for it?”

“Not tonight, but she wants to arrange something with you tomorrow.”

“Probably more tests, which I am getting sick of by the way. Although they pay nicely.” Gabriel led the way out and stopped at the platform. “Now, how do we go about getting a taxi?”

“A what?”

“Transport to the hotel,” Gabriel said. Then he frowned, “Why didn’t taxi translate?”

“What is it?”

“Basically a service offering transport, either called or just on the streets in many places.”

“We have that I think, but we call it Hired Transport Service, HTS. Well, HTS contains...taksies, flights, and space travel. But we can call one to take us to the hotel.” Madeline said and picked up her pcu.

“Do that, I’d rather not walk,” Gabriel said looking out over the city and barely making out the Union tower in the distance.

Madeline chirped and called for a similar flying transport like the one they rode to the Union building, but not as fancy. Regardless of how much the vehicle cost, they made their way to the hotel without any issues. They stopped at street level and got out, Gabriel got several stares as they walked in. Though he had mostly gotten used to them at this point. He saw a family of Akrons that did indeed almost look similar to the grey aliens of human culture. Granted they were blue, more proportionately built, and had ears. Gabriel tried to ignore the onlookers and picked up the bags before they headed inside. Gabriel followed Madeline up to the reception but let her do the talking while he looked around.

The colors were a bit off, but otherwise, it looked like a human hotel. Gabriel was used to while, black, gold, and red, but here it was more colorful. The walls were white but with colorful abstract paintings, the roof was blue and the floor had several colorful mats. It was a bit over the top but everything was selected and placed carefully and didn’t clash too much. At least not to Gabriel’s untrained eye.

“Here we are, two rooms, number 267 and 268, already paid for,” the Phigos receptionist said as Gabriel began paying attention.

“Thank you,” Madeline said and accepted two square keys. They walked to a thankfully empty elevator.

“I’m not used to so many people staring at me,” Gabriel said after the doors closed.

“You’re a bit different from the pictures,” Madeline said. “And It takes the attention from me,” she added happily. “Not many have seen a Zilgi either, but everyone knows of us.”

“I suppose so, you said you people are just getting civilians to space?”

“More or less yeah, but we’ve had emissaries out for a generation at least. Not to mention pictures of our planet and people. I would love to see some of Earth.” she said and smiled at him. Gabriel in turn froze realizing his phone had exactly that.

“… Um, speaking of pictures,” Gabriel said sheepishly. “I kinda have some on my phone, that I loaned to Alith and Morthri.”

Madeline tensed somewhat, “I see,” she said as the elevator pinged. “And why haven’t you shown them to me?” She folded her arms over her chest and gave Gabriel a very good ‘what do you have to say for yourself young man’ look.’

“I sort of forgot?” Gabriel said. Madeline sighed and walked out ahead. “I’ll promise to show you before handing any off to the Union,” Gabriel said.

“What kind of pictures?” She asked.

“Most are of nature or some interesting things, or from work, serial numbers, and that.”

“Any of your sister?”

“I might have one or two,” Gabriel said as Madeline stopped outside the first room. “Are you mad?”

Madeline sighed, “No, not really, I’m used to you being… what did you call it, scatterbrained?”

“Yeah.”

“So, as long as you show me all of your pictures, and I mean all of them, I forgive you. If you by some strange reason have pictures of Victoria she wouldn't want anyone to see, I suppose you can avoid those.”

“I love you,” Gabriel said. “And while I’ve seen a few pictures of Zilg, do you have any of your family?”

“No, I had some on my first pcu, but that one disappeared when I was kidnapped. But I can ask my mom for some,” Madeline said as she inserted the key into the first room.

The lock beeped and the door opened. It had a large bed against the left wall, a washroom closer on the left, and a table with two chairs on the right alongside two wardrobes inserted into the wall. It looked like a hotel room you could find pretty much everywhere. Or at least a high-class room as everything looked of high quality. The view was also very nice, looking out over a park and a fountain.

“Huh nice view,” Gabriel said and put the bags down.

“And here’s your key,” Madeline said, smirking and handing him the other.

“As If we’re not sharing,” Gabriel said, looking at the key.

Madeline put a hand to her chest in mock shock, “An ambassador and an emissaries daughter in bed together? People will talk.”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes and smirked, “Good point, see you tomorrow,” he said and picked up his bag.

“Wait, wait, sorry,” Madeline chirped and grabbed his arm.

“No, you make a good point,” Gabriel said, teasing her. He turned around and stepped forwards, almost until they touched, “Unless you have a reason for me to stay?”

“Hmm,” Madeline hummed, she tried to look serious but her fur ridge was standing up, “I may have some exercises to promote cooperation and relations.” She said professionally as she walked around him and locked the door.

“Oh, do tell.”

Madeline tilted her head up almost to kiss him but stepped back and pulled down her pants, then she walked over to the bed while reaching to her back. Her dress fell away and she was left standing in just underwear.

“It involves two partners, one bed and very little clothes.” She sat down, leaning back with one leg over the other. “Interested?”

Gabriel dropped the bag to the floor and began unbuttoning his shirt, “Are you seducing me miss Nioni?”

“Not at all,” Madeline said as her gaze moved up and down Gabriel’s chest. “Like I said, just an exercise.”

“In what, pray tell?” Gabriel moved over to the bed and ran his hands up Madeline’s thighs.

“Foreplay, sex, cuddling and we’ll see if we have time for anything else,” Madeline smiled as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “You in?”

“I will be after foreplay,” Gabriel said.

Madeline chirped and twisted them around, pushing Gabriel down on the bed and straddling his legs. “Your puns I swear,” She unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down. “Now then,” she said and laid down on Gabriel’s chest, their noses almost touching. “The first exercise...”