The other sentinel, a gray-haired man with broad shoulders and an anvil jaw, got to his feet to walk with Lyra to the transport dock. “There’s a young lady who’s looking forward to seeing you. She had to be put under protective custody when she was told she couldn’t see you immediately.”
Lyra smiled. “That sounds like Sofie.”
When the sentinel auto reached the front of the townhouse Lyra rented, a few blocks away from the university, there was another Sentinel posted at the door—a middle-aged man, lean and watchful. She could see Sofie’s pale face and coppery hair in the window beside the door.
Lyra emerged from the auto, and the sentinel at the door stepped aside, allowing Sofie to burst out. She ran down the steps, reaching Lyra before she’d even stood upright, and launched herself at her sister. Her momentum knocked Lyra back against the auto’s doorframe. Sofie wrapped her slender limbs around Lyra, clinging on like a koala bear, sobbing her name into her neck.
“Honey,” Lyra grunted. “You’re not as little as you used to be.” She staggered away from the auto, awkwardly carrying Sofie’s clinging weight. Like Lyra, Sofie had inherited their father’s height, and stood just shy of six feet tall. Slender and willowy she may be, but she was still not exactly a featherweight.
At the stoop, Sofie finally let her feet down, taking the burden of her weight off of Lyra, but she kept her arms tightly wrapped around her older sister’s neck. “You’re here!” Sofie warbled. Her tears coated Lyra’s neck. “You’re alive!”
“It takes more than a few hostile aliens to kill me,” Lyra said. “You know that.”
Sofie pulled back, a watery smile at Lyra’s reference to the Kifs who’d nearly killed her seven years ago.
“Thank you for the ride,” Lyra said, turning back to the gray-haired sentinel who’d escorted her.
He gave her a brief salute, and ducked back into his vehicle. The sentinel who’d been posted at the front door joined him, giving Sofie a wary glance.
Lyra bit back a smile and turned back to Sofie. “Let’s go inside, kid.”
The inside of the townhouse was cold and echoey. The furniture was draped with sheets, protecting from the dust that settled over months of absence. Lyra lived mostly aboardship, but needed a place to crash between missions. Sofie lived in student quarters at the university, but stayed at the townhouse during school breaks.
The house was furnished with only the barest necessities for them both—identical platform beds in both bedrooms, a serviceable table in the kitchen, a perfunctory couch in the living room across from the display wall. The stark white walls held no art, the hard tile floors were unsoftened by any rugs. There were no personal photos, no sentimental knick-knacks, no plants, no pets. It was a shelter, and nothing more.
For Lyra, home was her sister. Until she’d been given custody of Sofie, she’d been a drifter—her mother dead, and her father long-vanished from her life. The military had given her a purpose, a direction. But Sofie had given her a reason to belong. Lyra could live on the silent edge of deepest space, so long as she had her family.
Her hand moved reflexively to her stomach. Her family was going to get bigger. Her heart lurched, a jagged pain in her chest. Exhausted to her bones, she felt the threat of tears burning the back of her eyes. She wasn’t going to cry in front of Sofie. Not when Sofie herself was still half-wild with the emotional whiplash of reuniting with her presumed-dead sister.
Lyra crashed onto the too-firm couch without pulling off the sheet draped over it. Dust puffed into the air around her.
Sofie came to a halt, standing in front of Lyra. “Okay, then,” she said, her voice suddenly firm, her gray eyes gone steely with resolve. “Tell me what happened.”
Lyra looked up at the sister she’d fought tooth and nail to return to. Her hand settled over her abdomen again. Sofie’s eyes followed the gesture, and then flicked up to Lyra’s face, wide and alarmed.
“Lyra,” she said, a whisper now. “What happened?”
Lyra laughed weakly, no humor in the sound. “Ah, Sof. Where do I even start?”
She told Sofie everything. Well, as much as necessary. Which was still enough to turn her face beet red as she admitted to the emotional pain she felt at leaving Asier—at the fact that she’d never see him again. That he would never see the child he’d been so hopeful for.
“Do you love him, Lyra?” Somewhere in that rambling, emotional outpouring, Sofie had come to sit beside Lyra on the couch. She took Lyra’s hand in hers, looking somberly into her sister’s eyes. Where Lyra’s were the crisp, unmarked blue of the a summer sky, Sofie’s were darker, grayer—a summer storm.
Lyra swallowed hard at another swell of emotion, trying to clear the tightness in her throat. She looked away from her sister. “I knew him for less than a month.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Lyra closed her eyes. “Yes. It makes no sense. But, yes.”
Sofie leaned against Lyra, laying her head on her shoulder like she used to do when she was only ten. “It makes sense. He’s done more for you—with you—than any other man you’ve ever been with.”
“How would you know?” Lyra asked. She’d been careful to keep her few, brief liaisons discreet and low-key.
“Please, Lyra. We’ve lived aboard one ship or another since I came to you. There are no secrets on a ship. Gossip gets around like rotavirus.”
Lyra flushed. She’d taken lovers, enjoyed the physical company of a crewmate here and there. But none of them had taken her heart. Once, she would’ve said that she’d given all her heart to the little sister who’d needed her so badly. But now… maybe there’d been a part she hadn’t been aware of. Dormant, waiting for the right person. Waiting for Asier.
She sighed and let her head fall back. “What am I going to do?”
Sofie got up. “You’re going to eat and then you’re going to sleep.”
Lyra lifted her head to gaze balefully at her sister. “Hey, who’s the elder here?”
“You’ve been through hell. You’re exhausted. You’re broken-hearted. And you’re pregnant,” Sofie said gently. Then, more archly, she said, “You’re going to eat. And then you’re going to sleep. I’ll order delivery from Niko’s.”
Lyra couldn’t argue with reason. “Extra tsaziki.” After a moment’s pause, she added, “And an extra gyro.”
Chapter Seventeen
Leo Cluster, NGC 3842
Scaevos Multi-body System, Varan Moon
IG Standard Calendar 236.45.27
Losing Lyra was a pain he couldn’t heal from. Years ago, in a show-down with antimatter smugglers, he’d cracked his sternum and shattered three ribs. That pain didn’t hold a candle to missing Lyra, but the effects were similar. Every movement, every breath, every touch was agony. He couldn’t laugh. He couldn’t even smile.
He tried to bury himself in his work, but even that was a constant reminder of what he’d lost. If it weren’t for the traffickers, he’d have never met Lyra.
After the Kiri incident, instead of the disciplinary action he’d been expecting, Asier was awarded a commendation. He’d had to file a report, of course. All Enforcement operations were meticulously logged. But the incident on Kiri was particularly sensitive—he’d interacted directly with an abducted human, and then allowed her to steal and damage an Enforcement vessel before disappearing into the unreachable boundaries of human territory.
He’d left the true nature of his relationship with Lyra out of the report. He’d never done such a thing before. He was well aware of the unethical nature of his omission. He didn’t care. Thinking of her was a knife in his chest. He did it as little as possible.
But, despite all of those failures, the successes were greater. Since attaching the mirroring tracker to the traffickers’ ship on Kiri, his operation had managed to lock onto and identify five other vessels within the human trafficking cartel. They couldn’t move in just yet, but one of Asier’s other agents had cultivated a valuable informan
t—a Scaeven who’d recently completed the bureaucratic process for his human mate’s residency.
And so the Kiri Incident went into his personal file as a meritorious commendation. His operation’s funding increased and he was allocated two new agents.
Burying himself in the operation, he’d come to focus single-minded devotion on the issue of getting an agent to one of the auctions. But every Scaeven with a human mate told the same story—something along the lines of: she was on a Ravanoth vessel and I met her at a legal port and one thing led to another…
The Ravanoth were the only significant species that overlapped contact between humans and Scaevens. The Ravanoth had signed treaties securing their silence in exchange for tech schematics. However, the overlap allowed just enough plausible deniability for accidental Scaeven-human contact. A human stow-away on a Ravanoth vessel could conceivably make it to a port where Scaevens also traveled.
Instead of sticking to that usual line, their informant had openly boasted that he’d purchased his human mate at an auction. The agent who’d cultivated the informant was already mated to a Ljarken female, and so wasn’t suitable to pursue the lead.
But Asier, unmated, and nearly feral for want of the woman he’d lost, was the perfect stand-in.
It had taken time to gain access to the informant. After his initial confession, he’d made a point of recanting—disavowing all knowledge of the human auctions, and refusing to speak to anybody about them.
Thwarted, Asier was forced to turn to anonymity and manipulation. Operating under a constructed identity, Asier managed to contact the informant through a series of shared acquaintances, communicating only through an encrypted, private network.
After a thousand rounds of coy, veiled allusions to the subject, Asier had finally gotten the informant to admit to purchasing an abducted human female through a trafficking ring. After more back-and-forth, he’d gotten a tentative offer to put Asier in contact with the auctioneers.
Virgo System, Andromeda Galaxy
Copernicus Station
IG Standard Calendar 236.45.27
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping more?” Sofie appeared in the kitchen, hair still mussed and eyes still groggy from a full night’s sleep.
Lyra hadn’t slept in three days. And she didn’t feel tired. Actually, despite her giant belly—far bigger than two-months of pregnancy warranted—she felt like she could run a marathon. In a perfectly reverse correlation to her increased strength and diminishing need for sleep, her appetite had become insatiable.
She opened the cabinet to get a glass, and ripped the door clean off the hinges.
Sofie blinked. “I’ve heard of pregnancy brain, but this whole pregnancy She-Hulk thing seems a little unusual.”
Lyra looked askance at the cabinet door. She held it in one hand, as easily as holding a book. Somewhat bemused, she laid it on the counter. Moving as cautiously as if she were handling a newborn kitten, she pulled a glass down from the shelf.
“Asier told me that the baby would affect me on a genetic level.”
Sofie’s eyes went round and alert with academic fascination. “Are you becoming Scaeven?” She crossed the small kitchenette to examine Lyra closely. “Sit down, let me run a quick medi-scan.”
Lyra complied, pulling out a chair from the kitchen table while Sofie went to fetch the scanner. “I don’t think I’m becoming Scaeven. But he said the mates of Scaevens acquire some of their traits.”
Sofie returned from the bathroom with the small home medi-scanner. Lyra dutifully slid the probe beneath her tongue and waited for the little computer to assess her. A minute later, it chirped. Sofie scrolled through the results, searching for anomalies while Lyra slid the probe into the sanitizer.
“Well… it knows you’re pregnant, but it thinks you’re at twenty-two weeks, when you’re only at twelve.” She frowned and continued to scroll. “Your blood-oxygen levels are high, but nothing worrisome. The baby…” Sofie hesitated. “The scanner suggests anomalies with the baby.”
Lyra’s hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist. “I can’t go to the hospital.” Her voice was strained. “When I signed my commission with the university’s research department, I waived my medical autonomy in the event of alien biological interference.” She lifted wide, wary eyes to meet Sofie’s stricken gaze. “They could take my son from me, Sofie.”
Sofie chewed her lip. “What about the father? There must be some way to contact him.”
“No,” she said thickly. Tears burned behind her eyes, and she squeezed them shut. When had she become such a weepy mess? She’d always been the strong one.
Sofie’s arms circled her shoulders, her chin resting atop Lyra’s head. “We’ll figure it out,” Sofie said. “It’ll be okay.”
“That’s my line,” Lyra said gruffly, swiping at a single tear.
Days later, Sofie found Lyra sitting at the kitchen table, eating slice after slice of cultivated beef and toying with the broken RSP core.
“What’s that?”
Lyra looked up, only just noticing Sofie’s presence. Her hand curled protectively around the RSP. “A tracker. I ripped it out of the shuttle when I escaped so Asier wouldn’t be able to find me.” She let out a wry laugh.
“Is there any way to activate it?”
“If I could get access to a Ravanoth ship, I might be able to swap out one of their RSP for this one. But then I’d have to be able to stay on the ship until a Scaeven unit responded.”
Sofie was quiet for a moment. “I have a friend in the mech engineering department,” she said thoughtfully. “They might be able to get me access to something that would work…”
“Sofie,” Lyra warned. “The university knows you’re my ward. If you go stealing Ravanoth tech when they’re still grilling me on a regular basis about my experience with the Scaevens…”
Sofie scoffed, her expression one of grievous insult. “I know how to be sneaky, Lyra.”
Lyra couldn’t help but laugh. Dozens of Sofie’s childhood schemes flashed through her mind. “My apologies,” she said with a fond smile. “I forgot who I was dealing with.”
Chapter Eighteen
Leo Cluster, NGC 3842
Scaevos Multi-body System, Narik Moon
IG Standard Calendar 236.46.13
The informant hadn’t wanted to say any more over a comm line—encrypted or not. Instead, he wanted to speak in person. He’d invited Asier into his home—revealing both his location and his identity in one trusting concession.
Asier knew the prior secrecy hadn’t been for fear of legal jeopardy. With a pregnant mate, the law wouldn’t go near him. But if the cartel found out he’d snitched—knowingly or unknowingly—there’d be a serious reprisal.
Asier sat in the heavily guarded privacy of the informant’s home—a large, old-family estate on Scaevos’ second largest moon, Narik. The informant, Therin Tan-Claro, came from a long, wealthy line of powerful patriarchs. His family controlled the majority of known palladium veins in Scaevos.
Therin’s hair was unrelieved black, his skin a slightly darker gray than Asier’s. He was of middling height, but he towered over the human woman who stood in his shadow.
Therin’s mate was a diminutive creature—much shorter than Lyra—with dark curling hair and wide, amber-brown eyes. Her tawny skin should’ve looked rich and vibrant. But there was something wan, ashen about her. She sat silently beside Therin, eyes void of feeling, her small hand stroking mechanically over the full swell of her pregnant belly.
Asier had expected Therin to have his mate hidden away from a strange, unmated male. When he’d seen the tiny creature standing beside her Scaeven purchaser, he’d waited to be struck by the pheromonal impact of a pregnant human female.
But he felt nothing. Well, nothing except for a carefully repressed burst of protective anger for the small woman. She didn’t want to be here—she had the same vacant sadness his mother’d always lived with. The same hollowness he’d seen in Lyra’s eyes when he’
d held her captive in the quarantine cell.
Pain lanced through Asier at the reminder of losing her, but something else bolstered him. Relief. He hadn’t done to Lyra what had been done to the diminished, empty woman sitting across from him.
Revolted by the conversation he had to have in front of the woman, but resolute to carry out his duties, Asier pasted a pleasantly neutral expression on his face and focused his attention on Therin. “Congratulations on your beautiful mate,” he said as warmly as he cold manage.
Therin dipped his head in response. “You are interested in securing similar circumstances for yourself.”
Asier nodded rigidly. “I might be.” His glance flicked to Therin’s silent mate. “Although I’ve heard that the… the appeal of human women drives Scaevens to madness.”
“There is truth to that. The attraction does initially drive you out of your senses. Human biology is the pinnacle of reproductive temptation.” Therin cast his mate an indulgent smile. “But, as soon as she conceives, the compulsion releases you.
Asier froze. “But your toxin—”
“Once she conceives it no longer affects her. Or me.” Therin stroked a big gray hand down his mate’s slim, tawny arm. The woman did not react to his touch. “Now that I’ve got a son on her, my mind is my own.”
The inside of Asier’s skull was ringing like a gong. “That isn’t how it happens with mates of other species.”
“No. But, then, the toxin doesn’t affect them as strongly as it does human females either.” Therin shrugged. “Their species willingly ingests ethanol and capsaicin. Who knows what strange metabolic processes humans employ? I’m a palladium miner, not a biologist.”
Asier’s heart pounded in his chest, so hard he was sure Therin would hear it. He got to his feet, unsteady. “How do I…” he trailed off, losing his thought mid sentence.
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