Maryam

Maryam Page 7

by Tracy St. John

  Ihas’s brows rose. “Just as healthy par­ents can oc­ca­sion­ally pass on dam­aged ge­net­ics, a man with flawed ge­netic ma­te­rial can oc­ca­sion­ally pro­duce healthy off­spring. Any physi­cian who didn’t elim­i­nate all pos­si­bil­i­ties isn’t much of a doc­tor.”

  The thin thread of hope re­turned, but Maryam was afraid to grasp it. It wasn’t worth the pain of crush­ing dis­ap­point­ment.

  Once again, Ihas seemed to read her mind. He smiled and ges­tured to one of the more im­pos­ing de­vices be­tween two of the ex­am­i­na­tion ta­bles. “We’re mak­ing sup­po­si­tions when we should be col­lect­ing data. If you’ll stand be­hind the scan­ning screen, I’ll look for ab­nor­mal­i­ties.”

  He di­rected Maryam be­hind the mas­sive screen and brought up a vid of the scan as he per­formed it. She stared in fas­ci­na­tion at her own in­ner work­ings, find­ing the clicks and beeps of the ma­chine some­how sooth­ing as it homed in on her ab­domen.

  Medicine had been her cho­sen vo­ca­tion, and she’d had ev­ery in­ten­tion of com­plet­ing pre-med once her hus­band fin­ished his ed­u­ca­tion. He’d talked her out of it when she’d be­come preg­nant the first time. Later, she’d con­ceded to his wishes to con­tinue try­ing for chil­dren rather than pur­su­ing her stud­ies.

  Not­ing her in­ter­est, Ihas talked her through the scan, ex­plain­ing what he saw and the com­puter’s find­ings as well. What he found—or more ac­cu­rately, didn’t find—en­cour­aged op­ti­mism. Op­ti­mism she didn’t want to ac­knowl­edge.

  “Here’s the ver­dict,” Ihas told her as she re­luc­tantly stepped from the scan­ner. “No ob­vi­ous in­suf­fi­ciency as far as a vis­ual in­ter­pre­ta­tion is con­cerned. I’ll take blood and ge­netic sam­ples and send the di­ag­nos­tics to a gy­ne­co­log­i­cal team on Kalquor for anal­y­sis.”

  “Will you re­ceive the re­sults be­fore we ar­rive?” Maryam couldn’t stop the thrill of a po­ten­tially pos­i­tive find­ing from ex­cit­ing her imag­i­na­tion, though she tried to stave it off.

  “I’ll re­quest they make it a pri­or­ity. There’s no rea­son why they wouldn’t tell you what they find—if they find any is­sues at all.”

  Maryam su­per­sti­tiously crossed her fin­gers, then made her­self un­cross them. She had no busi­ness hop­ing for good news, not when she needed to find a way out of her predica­ment.

  Kels watched Maryam as she spoke with Dr. Ihas. Her de­meanor was the most at ease he’d seen from her, yet the Dramok’s shoul­ders tensed as they dis­cussed her con­di­tion in warm tones. His jaw ached, and he re­al­ized his teeth were grind­ing to­gether as Ihas chuck­led at some­thing Maryam had said. She smiled at the doc­tor.

  She’s not smiled at me like that.

  It was the thought of a jeal­ous man. The re­al­iza­tion yanked Kels out of the scru­tiny he’d watched the pair with.

  Ridicu­lous. I’m clanned to Briel. I have no rea­son to care whether this Earther likes me or not.

  “My Dramok? What’s wrong?” Der­gan whis­pered.

  Be­fore Kels could re­ply to his Nobek’s sharp senses, a deaf­en­ing boom sounded. Med­i­cal’s floor shook be­neath their feet, and Der­gan grabbed Kels’s shoul­der to steady him an in­stant be­fore Maryam cried out. She wob­bled and be­gan to fall.

  His re­flexes as quick as when he’d been in his twen­ties, Der­gan shot for­ward and caught her. As he stead­ied her, his eyes met Kels’s.

  They’d both served on war­ships for decades be­fore land­ing high-rank­ing po­si­tions on Kalquor. There was no mis­tak­ing the sounds and sen­sa­tions of be­ing un­der at­tack.

  Kels took Maryam when Der­gan thrust her into his arms. His Nobek shouted, “I’ll get to Briel. You stay here!” He ran out of Med­i­cal in a blur.

  “What’s hap­pen­ing?” Maryam cried out, clutch­ing at Kels.

  “I need to go to the bridge,” he called to the stag­ger­ing Ihas, pre­par­ing to put him in charge of Maryam’s wel­fare. He re­fused to ac­knowl­edge the re­luc­tance to let her go.

  An­other thun­der­clap shook them, much harder than be­fore. The scan­ner, an in­cred­i­bly heavy piece of equip­ment, launched to­ward Kels and Maryam.

  There was no time to move out of its way. Kels swiveled, shield­ing Maryam from the im­pact with his body. Pain blasted through him, and he was driven to the floor. He in­stinc­tively curled around the Earther, his only thought to pro­tect her frag­ile body.

  For a few sec­onds, he pulsed with agony. He was aware of shouts ev­ery­where, of the floor be­neath him, of Maryam squirm­ing free and sit­ting up be­side him.

  “Come back,” he tried to say, fear of her be­ing hurt by fly­ing ma­chin­ery over­rid­ing the pain. All he could do was gasp.

  Her voice pitched high, she shouted, “Kels is hurt! Dr. Ihas, help!”

  Kels strug­gled to rise, shak­ing his head to free it of the cob­webs in­fest­ing his brain. Con­cern for Maryam helped him dis­cover his voice. “I’m all right. Matara, are you in­jured?”

  She didn’t an­swer, mov­ing aside as Ihas knelt be­side him, run­ning his hands over Kels’s scalp. The Dramok hissed when the doc­tor’s fin­gers pressed on a sore spot.

  “The cut is shal­low, but I should scan for a con­cus­sion. Where else are you hurt?” He yanked at the top of Kels’s form­suit, open­ing the seam against his spine. The beep of a hand­held scan­ner sounded.

  Im­pa­tient with his body’s protests—he’d taken worse beat­ings, though he’d been much younger then—Kels stag­gered to his feet. “I said I’m fine.”

  “Bruised, but oth­er­wise, you seem fine. Let me scan your brain and stop the bleed­ing from that cut—”

  He was in­ter­rupted by Pana’s scream. “Kels!”

  The Dramok tried to make sense of what he saw. Der­gan stam­ped­ing through the door, rac­ing to Ihas, Pana hard on his heels. Both men, their eyes wide with fright—Der­gan afraid as Kels had never seen him be­fore. Briel, draped un­con­scious in his arms, blood pat­ter­ing to the floor from her head.

  Her head—what was wrong with her head? It had to be a trick of the light. Maybe it was the pat­tern of the blood splashed over it. Surely his eyes were fooled into see­ing the right frontal por­tion of her skull caved in.

  “I can’t find a pulse. Help her!” Der­gan thrust Briel to­ward Ihas.

  Maryam cried out in hor­ror. She grabbed Kels’s arm as he surged for­ward, his hands reach­ing out to snatch his Matara from Der­gan.

  “Put her on the ta­ble.” Ihas jumped in the way, block­ing Kels from get­ting to his clan­mate. Sev­eral medics con­verged on Briel as well, shov­ing Kels aside as they took her from Der­gan and bore her limp body to the near­est medi-bed.

  Of course. They were the men to help his Matara. He needed to stay out of the way. The thoughts came slug­gishly to his brain, and the room spun.

  She’s hurt. I have to save her.

  “Let them help her, Kels.”

  Maryam’s voice came from far off, mak­ing him aware of the weight on his arm. She wasn’t dis­tant, but right there, cling­ing to him, her blue eyes swim­ming with tears. Her lips moved.

  “She’s young. She’s strong. They’ll bring her back.”

  Kels blinked at the Earther. He looked around, his gaze skit­ter­ing past the med­i­cal team crowd­ing the medi-bed they’d placed Briel on, their bod­ies block­ing his view of her.

  Pana ap­peared within the kalei­do­scope of non­sense im­ages try­ing to im­press them­selves on Kels’s con­fused stare. The Imdiko cov­ered his face with his hands. His shoul­ders shook vi­o­lently, but Kels heard no sound com­ing from him.

  Der­gan was there too. He was talk­ing, and Kels strained to hear him over the roar that had sud­denly filled his ears. “…first wave of the at­tack. The ceil­ing fell in on her and Pana. A heavy struc­tural beam
came down—”

  Pana emerged from be­hind his hands to wail, his stri­dent grief cut­ting through. “I was no more than three feet away. The beam missed me en­tirely. How? Why? Why?”

  Pana’s stricken ex­pres­sion and stri­dent scream snapped Kels out of the shock that had been smoth­er­ing him for the last few mo­ments. The Dramok reached for his clan­mate. Grab­bing Pana by the el­bow, he pulled him close, wrap­ping his arm around his shoul­ders. Pana’s face was hot against his neck.

  “Her heart’s started again.” The roar in Kels’s ears re­ceded, al­low­ing him to hear Dr. Ihas.

  “The baby’s vi­tal signs are still strong,” an­other medic re­ported.

  “Thank God. They’re both alive,” Maryam breathed. She was still at­tached to Kels’s arm, the one he wasn’t hold­ing Pana with.

  Kels shared her in­stant of hope, but the medics con­tin­ued to crowd around Briel, ig­nor­ing the in­jured de­stroyer crew that had be­gun to gather in Med­i­cal. A medic glanced up and shouted, “Is any­one se­ri­ously in­jured?” When none spoke up, he re­joined the tense mut­ter­ing com­ing from the grim physi­cians sur­round­ing Kels’s Matara.

  Some­thing was still very wrong. Again, Kels saw in his mind’s eye the in­dented por­tion of Briel’s head.

  A trick of the light. That’s all it was.

  His arm tight­ened on the trem­bling Pana. Help­less­ness yawned wide be­neath Kels, ready to swal­low him whole.

  It felt as if he waited for­ever for the ver­dict. Yet when Ihas stepped away from Briel as tech­ni­cians wheeled over im­pos­ing ma­chines, Kels was forced to re­strain the urge to run out of Med­i­cal. He needed more time. He wasn’t ready for the doc­tor to shat­ter his world.

  Pana’s trem­bles grew to quakes as Ihas ap­proached with a bleak ex­pres­sion. Der­gan was frozen, his jaw set as he called on a war­rior’s strength to see him through the com­ing sec­onds. Only Maryam clung to hope, her de­meanor plead­ing as Ihas’s re­luc­tant steps brought him close.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Pana cov­ered his face again. The slight­est of shud­ders ran through Der­gan’s frame. The floor be­neath Kels rocked, but he forced the bout of dizzi­ness off. He was their leader. He had to stay strong.

  A thin wail es­caped Maryam. “She’s alive. There’s got to be a chance she’ll pull through.”

  Ihas shook his head slowly, rob­bing them of any op­ti­mism. “The ma­chines are keep­ing her body func­tion­ing. She’s on full life sup­port. The dam­age to her brain is cat­a­strophic. Even if we were near a large med­i­cal fa­cil­ity—” His voice died, un­able to speak the fu­til­ity of the sit­u­a­tion.

  Kels braced him­self for the fi­nal blow. “The child?”

  “Un­in­jured. How­ever, de­spite life sup­port, the Matara’s or­gans are try­ing to shut down. I don’t know if I can main­tain her long enough to get us to a fa­cil­ity with an ar­ti­fi­cial womb.” The bleak­ness in Ihas’s tone told the full story. Clan Kels’s baby was lost with its Matara.

  “Ar­ti­fi­cial wombs don’t bring a child to term in over sev­enty-five per­cent of cases. We need a sur­ro­gate.” Pana sobbed, al­ready griev­ing their loss.

  “We won’t reach Kalquor in time to trans­fer the fe­tus to a live sur­ro­gate.” Ihas was gen­tle, but there was no sug­ar­coat­ing the truth. No room for false hope.

  Der­gan clutched at straws any­way. “Sta­sis? If you put her in sta­sis un­til we re­turn—”

  “Halt­ing the fe­tus’s de­vel­op­ment for that long and keep­ing it vi­able isn’t pos­si­ble. All I can do is try to stay one step ahead of the mother’s or­gan fail­ures and hold out for a mir­a­cle.”

  “A mir­a­cle.” Kels choked on the words. He’d been lucky most of his life, but a mir­a­cle in such an in­stance was be­yond far­fetched.

  “At least it seems the at­tack is over. I’ll do my best.” Ihas didn’t have to tell them his best wouldn’t be good enough.

  Kels held Pana and the weep­ing Maryam, whom he didn’t re­mem­ber em­brac­ing. He’d per­formed his duty by ab­duct­ing her, and now he’d paid the price. He’d lost his Matara. He would soon lose his son. The for­tu­nate Dramok wasn’t so for­tu­nate af­ter all.

  Maryam sobbed against Kels’s chest, not car­ing she took com­fort from her kid­nap­per. Briel was brain­dead, and her child had lit­tle prospect to sur­vive. How had this hap­pened? It seemed im­pos­si­ble that im­petu­ous, ad­ven­tur­ous Briel could be gone.

  Maryam failed to re­al­ize some­one else had come in un­til Kels spoke. “Who at­tacked us?”

  “The Earther as­sault fighter known as the Cho­sen. It docked at Pelk Sta­tion be­fore we left—we had a dust-up with their crew be­fore we de­parted,” a rum­bling voice replied.

  The an­swer pulled Maryam from Kels’s warmth. She looked up into the stern gaze of a Kalquo­rian about Der­gan’s size and stature. He ap­peared about the same age as Briel’s clan­mates, with a wide face and bul­bous nose. His hair was caught in a thick braid so tight that it pulled at the cor­ners of his eyes.

  He ac­corded her a nod in­stead of the typ­i­cal Kalquo­rian bow. “I am Cap­tain Odak. You’ve caused us a lot of trou­ble, Matara.”

  She stepped away from Kels, anger push­ing aside the grief for a mo­ment. “It wasn’t my idea to be here.”

  “I’m aware.” Odak turned his re­gard to Kels, and his mood dark­ened. “I re­al­ize we were un­der or­ders. I’ve also been in­formed your Matara took a griev­ous in­jury, threat­en­ing the life of your child. How­ever, we are in bad shape be­cause of this mat­ter.”

  Der­gan seemed al­most re­lieved to be given a dis­trac­tion. “How bad?”

  “The at­tack took out half our weapons, along with my weapons sub­com­man­der and half a dozen other mem­bers of my crew. My first of­fi­cer is griev­ously in­jured. De­fen­sive shield­ing is com­pro­mised and will not hold up to an­other sus­tained at­tack. We’re flee­ing, but the propul­sion sys­tem keep­ing us out of the Cho­sen’s range is fail­ing. We’ve de­tected more Earther ships head­ing in our di­rec­tion on long-range scans, in­clud­ing a bat­tle­cruiser.”

  Kels’s fists clenched. “Our backup?”

  “The near­est pa­trol is sev­eral days dis­tant. They’ll won’t reach us be­fore the Earth­ers do.”

  “You’ll have to sur­ren­der.” There was no joy in im­pend­ing res­cue in Maryam’s voice, not af­ter what had hap­pened to Briel. Not as the sit­u­a­tion un­folded be­fore her.

  Odak turned his sharp gaze on her. “Sur­ren­der isn’t pos­si­ble. Be­fore they opened fire, Cap­tain Miller told us the sin of sex­ual in­ter­course we’d forced upon you means you must be ex­e­cuted. To save your soul, is how he put it.” He sneered the state­ment, as if it tasted foul. “As the crim­i­nals who’d ru­ined you, we’re to be put to death too.”

  Kels was quick to protest. “We haven’t touched her in that man­ner. We have a Matara.” He blanched and Pana moaned.

  They’d had a Matara. Maryam won­dered how long it would take be­fore Kels, Der­gan, and Pana stopped speak­ing of Briel in the present tense.

  To keep them, es­pe­cially Pana, from crum­bling in the pres­ence of the un­com­pro­mis­ing cap­tain, Maryam said, “It’s true. Rape has not been among the crimes I’ve en­dured from your peo­ple.”

  Odak’s se­vere man­ner re­laxed the small­est bit. “Then we have a chance. If you’ll help us, that is.”

  Chap­ter Seven

  “…there­fore, be as­sured I have not been sex­u­ally as­saulted by my ab­duc­tors. I’m to be given to some­one on the Kalquo­rian Royal Coun­cil, on their home planet. There’s still an op­por­tu­nity to save me from my fate.”

  When Maryam fin­ished speak­ing, Odak switched off the vid-com recorder. “Thank you, Matara.”

  They were in
the cap­tain’s ready-room, which was more spa­cious than the quar­ters Maryam had wo­ken in. With a large desk, hov­er­chairs, a lounger, and shelves dec­o­rated with ar­ti­facts from var­i­ous plan­ets, it re­minded Maryam of a pri­vate study. It was a nice back­drop for Maryam’s mes­sage to Cap­tain Miller, recorded be­cause the Cho­sen wasn’t an­swer­ing Odak’s hails.

  Der­gan stood be­hind Odak as the cap­tain clicked the recorder off. The Nobek glow­ered, an ex­pres­sion that left him both dan­ger­ous and hand­some, much as Maryam hated to ad­mit it to her­self. “She shouldn’t have of­fered the in­for­ma­tion that her in­tended mate is a high-rank­ing of­fi­cial.”

  “My su­pe­ri­ors can fig­ure it out later. The fo­cus is on sav­ing the lives of this crew,” Odak snapped.

  Maryam had con­sid­ered telling them of Earth’s bru­tal stance on women who were merely sus­pected of il­licit acts. How­ever, Odak was tem­per­a­men­tal enough with­out dash­ing his hopes. He was des­per­ate to avoid fur­ther bat­tles with her peo­ple. She wanted to be else­where when he found out how lit­tle ef­fect her ef­fort would likely have.

  Kels and his pal Der­gan had screwed her life up. She’d been in no hurry to re­turn to Earth, but hav­ing that door slammed in her face, never to be opened again…it an­gered and sad­dened her all at once.

  Mean­while, Der­gan and Odak were deal­ing with a tense mo­ment of their own. “We re­ceived our or­ders from the coun­cil it­self. She’s to be taken to Kalquor.”

  “Which we have done our best to carry out. At this point, we have scant pos­si­bil­ity of suc­cess, and I have to save as many lives as I can.”

  “I’ll have your com­mis­sion for this.”

  “That’s fine. For now, I’m in com­mand of this ship, and I’ll re­turn the woman to her peo­ple if I have the op­por­tu­nity. Get out of my way, Nobek. I’m needed on the bridge.”

  He trig­gered the door and im­pa­tiently mo­tioned for them to leave. With a growl, Der­gan prod­ded Maryam to exit. She tensed for an in­stant, but his ir­ri­ta­tion was all for Odak. The Nobek’s touch on her was gen­tle, if not his de­meanor.

 

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