by Calista Skye
Well, they were right. It was risky. That was the point. The Acerex would respect and understand in their quiet way. And accept.
Even Cori'ax would understand this. Perhaps he would realize that he was wrong about her, that she was more than an easy lay for him, that she was every bit as much a warrior as he was.
She felt a hard sting in her heart at the thought of him, and familiar tears came to her eyes again. She missed him more than she'd ever missed anyone. She would have loved to have him here right now. Just the two of them.
If things had been different. Very different.
How could she have been so wrong? Had he really been faking the whole thing? If so, she had totally misjudged him. She had thought he was the one. She really had. Whether she was his Mahan or not, he had been the one for her.
And he probably still was.
She cupped her huge bump. Well, she wasn't doing this for him. She was doing it for her, for the baby.
She looked out the window. This was still a forbidden planet for Earthlings, mostly for their own safety. But this act would show everyone that Charlotte belonged as much to Acerex as to Earth. And that her daughter did, too.
It was the middle of the day and Acerex's sun was beating down on the impossibly green landscape. New plants were growing out of the ashes that was all that remained of the Fire's passing about two hundred days before, but they still hadn't started producing the extremely flammable chemicals that made them burn so bright when the blaze came again on its eternal circling of the planet.
She was alone, but nobody would doubt that the birth had taken place here. The dropship's automatic logbook, secured by military-grade encryption and impossible to fake or trick, would show every detail of where it had been. The midwife robot had a similar recording system that was usually used to optimize the way it worked.
She had cameras, too. She took one of them and pointed it out the window. The reflections made it hard to see out, so she opened the hatch.
Immediately the smell of the planet hit her and she almost fell backwards at the force of it. Burning, ashes, chemicals, smoke. Sweet-smelling flowers and foul-smelling bushes that would soon bear fruit dripping with flammable liquids. The Fire approaching. Danger. Death.
Her skin crept when her thoughts went back to the last time she'd been here. With Lily and Ava first, then joined by Harper and Vrax'ton. Crashed and stranded. She had thought she would die back then. She had been sure. And she had almost been right.
The shapes in the sky were coming closer, probably attracted by the newcomer. The craft would stand out for the many predators and creatures that lived here. Not many of them could cause serious damage to it.
A harsh shriek reached her from some terrible creature not too far away. She felt her resolve weaken. Shit. Was it a huge mistake coming here?
Well, she was here now. She lifted the camera again and took a step out onto the surface. The dropship's engines had burned away some of the tall grass, and she saw no animals close by. She panned the camera around.
“Bosh,” she said in the Acerex language, keeping her voice steady and detached. “The Fire Planet. Date fifteen fifteen ninety-nine two.”
She knew any warrior who had survived his Trials would feel a cold shiver down his back when he saw this footage. The burned ground, the strong smells and the strangely colored sky created an eerie, ominous atmosphere that she'd found on no other planet. The Fire Planet radiated danger and menace, even on the opposite side of where the Fire was raging.
A large insect the size of a seagull came buzzing out of the undergrowth, heading straight for her. She almost panicked and ducked, but then the insect seemed to hit some invisible barrier in the air and buzzed away again, much less steadily.
Charlotte straightened. Ah. The forcefield that Lily had designed for her dropship was still working, even when landed on a planet. It would keep smaller threats away, while the larger creatures here could get through it without even noticing that the forcefield was there. But any little help she could get was fine.
The eerie silence was rent by another shrill scream, closer now, and she quickly stepped back inside the shuttle and closed the hatch. “That's enough daredevil stuff from us,” she mumbled to herself and the baby. “This whole thing is insane enough already.”
She checked the craft's systems, just making sure that it could take off at a moment's notice if necessary. The contractions were closer together now, and it was about time to get ready.
The midwife robot had the same idea. “Why don't you come here and have a seat, sweetie?” it calmly suggested. “Might as well get rid of that suit of yours, too. Hey, I'm good, but even I can't extract a baby through seven layers of that fancy fabric.”
23
- Cori'ax -
His piloting was rusty, but the shuttle was fast and it could find the way all by itself.
The way to the Fire Planet.
The idea made his skin crawl. It was like going to Hell itself after escaping it once and for all years earlier.
He touched his ruined face. He would not have gone back there for any other reason. Only Charlotte could make him go there. But she could probably make him live there if she wanted.
She was his Mahan. He knew it as clearly as he knew that the ground was down and that he had five fingers on each hand. He had never been so sure about anything before. This he knew to be true with all his soul.
He saw the Fire Planet grow larger in front of the shuttle as he came closer. He could see the Fire now, a jagged, white line on the night side. It looked like a crack in the planet, showing the hellish fires inside it. But the hell was on the surface.
She was his Mahan. And he hadn't known it until now.
He frowned. Had he really not known it?
No, he concluded. He had not. She had been right for him in every way, certainly. Except that she was an alien and an enemy. Something deep inside him had not allowed those thoughts to merge. First, that he had a Mahan, contrary to all his expectations. Second, that his Mahan was an alien. Third, that his Mahan was an enemy who was trying to weaken his beloved planet.
But now that he realized that Earthlings were in fact friends, he could allow things to come together in his mind. It was a puzzle with only two pieces, but until now they just hadn't fit together. There had been three pieces, but one of them was fake and didn't belong.
Then Harper had forced him to take the fake piece away, and then the puzzle in his mind had been completed in an explosion of joy that had knocked him out like nothing else ever had.
Charlotte wasn't an alien any more than he was. She was as much an Acerex warrior as he was. Just like Harper and Lily were, too. They'd had every chance to ruin things for Acerex. And then they had only made everything better. Clearly and demonstrably, they had made Acerex stronger.
She was his Mahan, but he had probably blown his chances with her. Whatever it was he had done wrong.
It didn't matter what specifically he had done wrong. Probably she had tired of hearing him always talk about aliens in a disparaging way. He deserved nothing better than to live out his days longing for her, feeling the pain every day. He had resisted facing the truth about the Earthlings, even when it stared him in the face. He'd been a total coward who didn't want to give up a cherished belief.
No, she was out of reach as a wife. She would find someone else, a glamorous Earthling prince or an Acerex chief or nobleman. Fine. He would wish her well. He would be content that he had gotten everything he deserved and that she would be happy.
Well, at least he had experienced that legendary feeling of finding his Mahan. Indeed the world had changed for him. Totally and fully. Or rather, he had changed how he saw the world.
When he got back to his feet after fainting with the realization, he had been a new man. Something had stayed on that hangar floor, something wrong and painful that he now didn't have to carry with him anymore. She had done that for him without knowing.
And there would be a baby.
>
A baby!
The thought made his head spin, so he should probably not think about that while piloting a shuttle to the Fire Planet. He had no idea where to begin with that thought anyway. It filled him with both dread and joy.
The planet filled the viewscreen in front of him, and now all he had to do was find her.
Could she have gone to Gideo Station, in orbit around the planet itself? There might be Earthlings there. It was her old workplace, but he had a feeling she wouldn't see going there as making much sense for her purposes.
No, if she was really here, then the point was giving birth on the Fire Planet. It had to be the planet itself.
The only question then became where on the planet she was.
Right close to the Fire would not make any sense. And while she was as brave as any warrior Cori'ax had ever seen, she wasn't stupid. No, she would not be close to the Fire. Not in its path, and not where it had just passed. Strange things happened in the newly burned landscapes, things that were hard to explain. And lethal, like everything on this cursed world.
What about, say, a quarter revolution behind the Fire? Everything would be burned out, and the predators wouldn't be too active there. They would be too busy being gestated and growing and procreating before the next Fire would come.
Someone who didn't know the planet well might think that the safest place would be halfway around it, at the exact opposite side of the Fire. The blaze would be as far away as possible, and the vegetation would still be manageable.
He drew his breath in when that thought hit him. Only directly in front of the Fire was there anywhere more dangerous than at the exact opposite side. That part of the planet was exactly midway between one passing of the Fire and the next, but that was also the time when all the prey animals came of age and moved out of their safe nests and eggs and pods and caves.
And the firebirds knew that. Of all the deadly predators on Bosh, they were the most intelligent and ferocious and dangerous. There weren't that many of them, but they were always present in force to eat their fill of newly hatched animals exactly opposite from the Fire. The young firebirds, mostly – the old ones would be experienced enough to prefer the challenge of hunting fully grown creatures that were running right in front of the Fire.
Exactly opposite from the Fire was also where the clouds would gather in the evenings. The smoke from the Fire had a tendency to drift halfway around the planet before it would become immense, black clouds that would appear almost out of nowhere and start the worst thunderstorms anyone had ever heard of, with lighting that would strike the ground many times every second, like a lethal rain of extremely highly charged electricity created by the enormous friction and static electricity that built up on the smoke on its way around the planet, high up.
A bad night could mean a fierce, rain-less thunderstorm and a flock of firebirds that would relish the spectacle.
Already he could see black clouds gather in a dark band that stretched across the whole continent. Soon they would start circling over the center of the continent, and there they would create a vortex of the most hellish thunderstorm in the universe.
Cori'ax was not in the habit of showing his fear, but the idea of being trapped in a storm like that, with only young firebirds for company, made him shudder.
And if Charlotte was in a place like that ... The heart sunk in his chest. The dusk line was creeping slowly towards the part of the planet that was opposite from the Fire, and if she was there, he had to get her out now. Because if he was in her place, and hadn't known better, that was where he would have gone himself. And he was now pretty sure that Charlotte didn't know the dangers.
He tried the radio, but the static from the Fire and the gathering clouds drowned out everything else.
A part of him wanted to turn away, but a much bigger part of him wanted nothing more than to keep going. It was the Fire Planet, and he feared nothing else as much as he feared that. But last time he had only been there to prove himself. This time, he was going there for Charlotte and their baby.
He couldn't hold back a grin as the shuttle started shaking as it hit the first spots of air at the very top of the atmosphere, aiming for the exact worst spot on the planet except for the Fire itself. It would probably be his death. But at least he was doing something right.
It was about time.
24
- Charlotte -
“There are many ways to do this,” the midwife robot said in its soothing way. “There's the easy way, and then there's the even easier way. There's the full spectrum of harder ways, too, but not a lot of mommies-to-be pick that. They're all completely safe. It's all up to you, sweetie.”
Charlotte leaned back in the extremely comfortable delivery chair that supported every point of her so well. Her belly stood skywards and looked like it was about the size of a mountain. She was bare from the chest down, and the robot had placed a soft sheet over her. People would probably think that giving birth inside a military dropship was extremely weird. To Charlotte, it felt pretty natural. She had spent a lot of her life in surroundings like this.
“Uh-huh. You know, I kind of want to feel it. Not too much, though. Just a little short of actual pain. Is that possible? With me being fully awake and able to experience the good emotions?”
The robot chuckled softly, the most un-robotic thing Charlotte had ever heard any of them do. “Oh, I think you'll find all the emotions about giving birth are good. You'll have the full experience, honey. Except the pain, of course. Most women pick that same thing. Good choice.”
“And none of those hologram illusions, either,” Charlotte added. “I'm fine right here, I don't need to think I'm on some tropical beach or in a log cabin or whatever.”
“You know, I had a feeling you'd say that. Let me know if you change your mind. I have a whole bunch of real nice scenarios to pick from.”
The robot wasn't made to look human. It was just a machine, but Charlotte didn't mind that. It was painted in whimsical colors and had silly cartoons all over it, as well as girly glitter and sparkly rainbows and rhinestones and fake jewels and sharpied greetings from mothers it had assisted before.
It was probably all perfectly sterile and clean, but the thing was calming and soothing and it had a touch that was so soft and at the same time effective that she felt completely safe in its many hands.
It placed one of them at Charlotte's arm, and the slightest little pressure told her that something had been injected.
“You can talk to me as much as you want, sweetie. I know everything that's going on with you and the child, but it'll be nice to hear your take on it, too.” The robot stroked her hair with one soft hand that managed to seem more safe and reassuring than a human hand would.
“Will you be my mom?” Charlotte said spontaneously and jokingly. She'd never had an older woman make her feel so cared for as this robot did.
“And the first meds are kicking in,” the robot said with a satisfied tone and kept working swiftly and elegantly. “Don't you have a mom, sweetie?”
She looked out of the windows. It was getting darker. Sooner than she had expected, but this whole thing was probably distorting her sense of time anyway. “Not for twenty years.”
“Then I'll be happy to be your mom today. I don't know how serious you were, but you can call me 'mommy' all you want. Lots of the girls like to do that when they start to feel the meds. And I think that's very, very nice. That's the way it was in the old days, you know. I mean, the really old days, before midwives were a thing. Just the girl and her mama and maybe some other older female relatives.”
It was getting darker fast, and most of the light in the dropship came from the instruments. But the robot didn't need light to work, and Charlotte was just as happy to not see absolutely everything that happened.
The contractions were pretty close together, and she knew it wouldn't be long now. “Mm. Yeah, I don't know. Do you have another name I can use?”
“Well, let's see n
ow. The woman I was modelled on is called Maisie. Maybe that could work?”
“It could. Maisie. Yeah, sure.”
The robot concentrated its attention on Charlotte's lower part. “Honey, if you don't mind me saying so: if you didn't have a mother before now, then you've done very well all by yourself.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte said and felt some tears welling up behind her eyes. “It's been tough sometimes, but it's not like I had a choice.”
The robot passed a tissue across her face, and it felt just like a swift breeze. “Maybe it didn't feel like a choice, but I think you've made many choices in your life. And looking at your physical body and the baby's fine condition, I think you made all the right ones.”
Except getting pregnant by an alien warrior who only saw me as a fun pastime.
“Sometimes,” she said aloud. She looked up at the ceiling of the shuttle, feeling Maisie the robot work under the sheet that covered her.
“Now, can you feel this?” Maisie asked.
Charlotte felt a little pinch. “Yeah, just about.”
“Fine. If you want, that's the most you'll feel from down here. What do you think? Turn it up? Turn it down?”
“Feels fine to me.”
“All right. I'm happy to tell you that the water just broke. Things are right on schedule, sweetie.”
Charlotte quickly checked the cameras. None of them would capture any of her intimate parts, but they would catch the important things. The Acerex weren't too visual, and rarely liked screen entertainments, but it made sense to just get as much evidence as she could.
Something was definitely going on at her nether parts now, and Maisie was as good as her word – there was no pain, just sensations that told Charlotte something about what was going on.
“How you holding up, sweetie?”
“I'm fine, thanks.”
“Everything is fine down he-”
WHAM!
There was a huge bang and a flash of light that bathed the interior of the shuttle in a harsh, white light for a split second.