Terraformed Skies

by Anna Lewis

  “Searing pen,” Lena said to the medic next to her.

  The man immediately handed her a long wire with a small pen attached. It made no noise as Lena dragged it along the interior of Trevor’s body, being extra careful to seal the muscle back together. More blood was being lost. The medic to her left announced his heart rate while the monitor beeped rapidly. An alert appeared next to his vitals on the screen. Lena ignored it and pressed on.

  “Another blood pack,” she said to her helpers.

  They quickly moved about the room, bringing her more blood packs and tools that she would need. It wouldn’t be long before the front of his skin was seared back into place. While he was on the table, she made sure to check for broken ribs and ran a few x-rays to see that his body was intact. The results appeared on the screen and she nodded with approval. Everything was fine. The only thing left was for Trevor to rest, the morphine pumping through his system to reduce the pain of being burned by the searing pen.

  As the medics moved him to a rolling bed, Lena accompanied him to the recovery room where he would sleep for a number of days. Each meal was eaten next to his bed. She read him books. Soldiers and officers would come to his bedside to offer their thanks, bringing him all manner of gifts. The scientists called at some point to inform Lena of their discoveries on the ship and told her that the military planned on disposing of it within the next two weeks.

  “What else did you find on the ship?” Lena asked over the phone as she munched on frozen berries.

  Since the hospital was emptied of patients and staff, much of the food had been left behind. It was still fresh and Lena helped herself to the kitchen as did many of the people who were staying in the rooms until their planes arrived to head back to their homes.

  “The computers held an enormous collection of data. It will take years to analyze it all. These Vihatagons had stores of knowledge on distant planets that we’ve yet to see. It was wonderful being able to retrieve that before the ship disappears,” replied Dr. Warren.

  “That sounds fantastic. I’d love to look through more of those documents if you wouldn’t mind,” replied Lena.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “And how is our hero doing?”

  Lena sighed. The monitor beeped slowly in the background as she studied Trevor’s face. He looked peaceful resting in the bed, undisturbed by aliens or orders. Or me, she thought.

  “He’s alive,” said Lena. “I think he’ll be fine.”

  “You’re a wonderful doctor. He’s in great hands,” said Dr. Warren.

  “I appreciate that, sir,” said Lena with a smile. “I’m just worried he might never wake up.”

  “Have faith in your ability to heal. Your hands have a gift and you can do more than simply operate,” he said in response. “Don’t forget the power of your voice.”

  It made Lena smile wider as tears came to her eyes, reminding her of how she was humming in the operating room.

  “Thank you, Dr. Warren. I need to run a vitals check. Let me know when I can come look through those files,” said Lena.

  “Yes, ma’am. Take care,” said Dr. Warren.

  “You, too,” said Lena.

  When she got off the phone, she stood from the chair and stretched briefly before checking Trevor’s vitals. Déjà vu struck her while she leaned over his body. A rush of images filled her mind of the first time they had made love, of the way his hands had gently curved over her hips and gripped her skin. The skin of her thighs twitched at the thought.

  “Oh, Trevor. Please, come home,” she whispered through quivering lips.

  It took all of her strength not to break down at that moment, her intense feelings causing her to feel nauseous. She felt like she was about to vomit. As she ran to the bathroom, Trevor opened his eyes and blinked a few times. The room appeared shiny as he returned to the world of consciousness, the sun filtering through the window. It seemed brighter than usual. Clouds of smoke no longer blocked the light, allowing the sun to bathe the Earth in healing rays of orange and yellow. It was the most beautiful thin he’d ever seen besides Lena’s face.

  Lena returned from the bathroom to see Trevor awake, rushing to the bed to wrap her arms around him. Trevor groaned.

  “I’m sorry!” she said through happy tears. “I’m just happy that you’re finally awake!”

  Sobbing, Lena pressed her cheek to his and stroked his hair, breathing in the scent of his skin. She didn’t care that he was covered in sweat and needed a bath. It was him. His scent would always be her greatest memory.

  “Oh, Lena...” Trevor croaked. “Thank you.”

  He knew she had taken care of him. Her dedication and affection brought him out of darkness and back into light, love leading the way. Happy tears streamed down his face as he stroked her cheek. Lena pulled back to look into his tears, absorbing every bit of affection from his gaze and smiling.

  “I have a surprise for you,” she whispered.

  Trevor smiled, his throat dry from being asleep for three days. Noticing his discomfort, Lena picked up the cup of water next to the bed and allowed him to drink from the straw. It quenched his thirst and he smiled with gratitude.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  Lena bit her lower lip. The smile on her face beamed bright in the afternoon light as she pulled a plastic pen from her pocket, holding it up in his line of vision. A blue happy face greeted him on the display to which he yelled triumphantly.

  “We’re having a baby,” said Lena through a smile.

  The overwhelming joy made Trevor weep, reaching his human arm out to embrace the love of his life. The war was over and the aliens were gone. They could live another day in peace amidst their earthly comrades. Now that they were having a baby, they could truly live the life they had imagined during the invasion. It inspired Trevor to be more than a commander in the Navy, more than a machine bred to cause mayhem and win wars. He wanted to change the world and inspire peace, giving up the life of violence that he had once led. The two kissed in the afternoon light, intermittently laughing and crying as their lips danced together. Delight radiated from their bodies as they cuddled under the sheets. Love had kept them alive.

  Love had won the battle.

  THE END

  = Bonus Book 2 of 16 =

  The End Game -

  Sports Romance

  Book 1: The Fumbling Football Player

  Detective Lilly Bruce sat at her desk, eyeing the stack of reports sitting on her desk.

  “Rethinking this whole Detective thing, are you?”

  Lilly rolled her eyes, slapping her new partner with a file folder playfully. She was annoyed, but not for the reason he thought.

  “No. I’m glad I changed careers. But I just wonder what the new Medical Examiner is doing. Did they hire someone straight out of school or is he just that careless?”

  “You wanna know what I think?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “I feel like you’re patronizing me.”

  “No really,” she said, a touch of sarcasm in her voice. “I always try to take advice on my former career from people who are afraid to step into the morgue.”

  “For the last time, I’m not afraid. I wasn’t feeling well when I came to work and it got the better of me at a bad time.”

  Lilly smiled, biting her lip to keep from laughing. She knew that it was very likely that Detective Adam Tremaine had indeed come to work sick that day, but that logical explanation wasn’t as fun. The image of big, burly Adam, with his slick blond hair and striking blue eyes passing out near the autopsy table was too good to pass up.

  So like everyone else, she constantly gave him grief over it, especially since it had happened while she was still the Medical Examiner for the small suburb of Fort Worth, Texas.

  “I guess I’ll never get the image of you face-planting inches from the drain out of my head.”

  “Back to the problem at hand,” he said, trying to steer the conversation away from his most embarrassing moment.


  “Sure. Please, tell me what you were thinking.”

  “I was thinking that he keeps doing that so that you’ll come down there and you can talk to him.”

  “No way,” Lilly said. “That’s asinine.”

  Adam shrugged.

  “Whatever you want to think. But I’m a man, and a man knows these things.”

  “Based on what, my stunning good looks?”

  Lilly laughed, shuffling through the papers and trying to make sense of the garbled notes on the page.

  “Exactly.”

  “Please,” Lilly chided him. “There’s no way.”

  “Is your mirror broken?”

  The Sergeant walked by, dropping another folder onto Lilly’s already piled up desk.

  “I hate to cut this little love story short, but we have a dead body at the football stadium in Brook Ridge. I need you two lovebirds out there ASAP before the scene is destroyed. The coach is getting antsy. Seems a dead body in their locker room on the first day of Spring Training is cramping their style.”

  Lilly grabbed the folder, which held only a fax from the department that had sent the case over after the 9-1-1 call and a grainy cellphone picture of the body stuffed into the equipment cage.

  “I hope no one disturbed the scene,” Lilly mumbled.

  “Someone always does, Lil,” Adam said.

  “That’s Detective Bruce,” Lilly corrected.

  “We’re partners. I’m not calling you ‘Detective’ anything.”

  “Don’t call me Lil.”

  “Fine.”

  Lilly grabbed the keys to their department issued car and headed to the parking lot.

  “It’s my turn to drive,” Adam said, trying to snatch the keys out of Lilly’s hand.

  “No way. I let you drive once. I almost ended up on the slab myself. I’d like to make it home in one piece.”

  “I’m a great driver.”

  “You’re a terrifying driver. It’s a wonder your license hasn’t been revoked yet.”

  Adam scoffed.

  “Says you. Maybe you’re not cut out for police work. You’re too prissy.”

  Lilly spun around, jabbing Adam in the chest with her finger. She was short, her head barely coming up to his collar bone, but she was a force of nature. Curly black hair seemed to have a life of its own as it settled on her shoulders. Jade green eyes flashed with anger at his words.

  “Don’t ever say that to me. I’m just as qualified as you are, perhaps even more so. You’re a horrible driver, but that doesn’t give you the right to question whether or not I belong here.”

  Adam put his hands up and took a step back.

  “Whoa, sorry. Didn’t mean to touch a nerve there.”

  “Well, you did. I’m not here to take crap for being a woman. If you don’t like it, get another partner. Heaven knows I can work this job alone.”

  “I’m sorry, really.”

  “You don’t sound sorry,” Lilly said, unlocking the car and getting into the driver’s seat.

  “I am sorry; I just don’t know how to deal with you.”

  “Treat me like one of the guys.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re not like one of the guys.”

  “Pretend I am if you have to. Do whatever it takes, just don’t call me Lil and don’t question my ability to do this job.”

  Adam slouched in the car seat, arms folded and mouth set.

  “You’re such a diva,” he mumbled under his breath.

  “What did you call me?”

  “A diva. I said you’re a diva. I’m not the only one who says it. People have been calling you that for a while; long before you became a detective.”

  Lilly pulled to a stoplight and took the opportunity to give Adam a withering glance.

  “They called me a diva?”

  “Not just a diva. Diva of the Dead.”

  “Huh.”

  “What do you mean ‘huh’?”

  “I think I actually like that. Diva of the Dead. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not going to answer that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It feels like a trap. Regardless, we’ve all been called worse. You need a thicker skin.”

  Lilly shrugged and pulled into the parking lot of the football stadium. They had work to do. They could pick up this conversation later.

  ***

  Lilly strode into the locker room, following the sound of crime scene investigators collecting evidence in the equipment room. The smell reached her long before she passed through the locker room.

  The football players sat in silence in the locker room, but she could feel their eyes on her as she passed by. There were a few low, breathy whistles, but Lilly couldn’t tell where they were coming from. To be honest, she didn’t really care. The Brook Ridge Railroaders were a minor league football team with aspirations of joining the national league. There was a lot of ego in the room, not an ounce of it earned, and Lilly wasn’t about to give them the reaction they were looking for.

  The equipment room was dank and dark, with single, bare bulbs spaced semi-evenly along the ceiling. The result was a creepy, yellow glow that made everything in the room look jaundiced.

  The smell was even worse in here, and Lilly soon knew why.

  “Is he in there under all that stuff?” Lilly asked, studying the decomposed mass under a mound of gray kettle balls.

  “Yep. And each of those weigh about fifteen pounds, so it’s going to take a while to clear them without disturbing the body.”

  “What’s that on his hands?”

  Lilly squatted down beside one arm that had slid out under the chain-link fencing that made up the equipment cage.

  “That,” the tech said, eyes darting to a dark corner of the room, “is the brain-child of the first man on the scene.”

  Lilly spun around, locking eyes with the man sitting on a low bench and watching everything around him with obvious interest. Her stride was long as she rushed towards him, shoulders tense.

  “You put sandwich baggies on his hands?”

  “Yep.”

  The man seemed proud.

  “What the hell, why?”

  “Um, I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do so that if there’s any skin under the nails you can preserve it.”

  “Did you touch the body?”

  “I had to. It was a lot of work to get the bags on and tie them.”

  Lilly rolled her eyes. Was this man serious?

  “And where did you get the idea that it was something you should do?”

  The man rattled off the names of several prime-time crime shows and Lilly groaned.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “You did several things wrong. But let’s focus on the baggies. When you jostled the hands around like that, you probably knocked any loose skin off and it’s going to be nearly impossible to find in the dust and dirt scattered on the concrete floor.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.”

  “Sorry doesn’t bring back evidence.”

  Adam stepped into her line of vision, giving her a slight shake of the head and trying to get her to stop her angry tirade.

  “Excuse me, Mr.—”

  “Hathaway. Jason Hathaway. I’m the Railroader’s tight-end.”

  He stuck his hand out, but Lilly didn’t take it. She walked a short distance away, standing close to Adam and talking in low tones.

  “What?”

  “Don’t badger the witness.”

  “Why? He’s an idiot.”

  “He may be an idiot, but he’s the only one cooperating. Don’t screw that up, he might be the only lead we have.”

  “So that’s it? He just gets a free-pass for messing up the crime scene?”

  “He didn’t mean to and I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “Well, some of us are realists instead of blind optimists.”

  “Regardless, we need him
to come to the station with us for questioning and we have no grounds to take him in against his will. He’s going to need to come willingly or you might as well drop this one in the cold case file today. We have no leads and no idea who the guy in the cage is.”

  Lilly looked at Jason Hathaway, sitting on the bench, his expression tense.

  “Fine. I’ll play nice. But I’m still pissed. This isn’t a television show; this is real life.”

  “That’s right, and I’m sure he’s sorry.”

  Lilly took a deep breath, trying to steel herself for the show she was about to put on. She was beyond irritated with this man and his actions, regardless of his intentions. She didn’t want to cut him some slack.

  “Mr. Hathaway?”

  “Please, call me Jason.”

  “Of course, Jason.”

  Lilly painted on her best southern belle smile.

  “I’m sorry I was a little harsh there a second ago. I appreciate the effort, even if the technique was a little rough.”

  “I’m really sorry about that. Next time, I’ll do better.”

  Next time? Was he hoping for more bodies?

  “I’m sure there won’t be a next time, but in any case, please leave the evidence collection to the professionals.”

  “I’m hoping there will be a next time. Football is just a way to pay my way through college. What I really want to be is a homicide detective.”

  Is he serious? Lilly thought.

  “It’s nice that you have dreams and aspirations,” Lilly said, mentally kicking herself for how off-putting her words sounded.

  She’d been in the business of death for so long that she really didn’t know what to say to the living at times. This was no exception. She knew what she wanted to say, but she didn’t think that telling him that he was living in a fantasy world was a nice thing to say.

  Still, it was tempting.

  But there was something about this handsome football player that made her hesitate. Normally she didn’t think twice about putting a man in his place. After all, she was just over five feet tall. In her line of work, if you were small in stature, you made up for it with a big presence. That’s what had always worked for Lilly, and she wasn’t about to change.