The Starlight Fortress

by Fiona Rawsontile

  “I’m really lucky to have met you, Mason.”

  He smiled and changed the subject. “You want to go camping this weekend? I’ll make sure nobody sees us.”

  “Camping? Huh, I’ve never done that. I heard it’s fun.”

  * * *

  However, when Mason came back from work on Friday, he was apparently in no mood for camping. Something was bothering him, but when she asked him, he said everything was all right. He was gone for the whole day on Saturday, which had never happened before, and he came back after midnight. When he woke up at noon, she brought in a pile of hundred bills and set it on the bedstand. “Still want a Taranis Sprit? I hope this is enough.”

  He sat up from bed and frowned. “Where did you get the money?”

  She didn’t answer his question. His gaze skimmed over her and stopped on her wrist. “You sold your watch?”

  “I don’t know what’s bothering you, Mason, but I don’t want to see you like this.”

  He looked away from her. “Geneva, I …” The pain was unmistakable.

  “You don’t have to tell me.” She stood up, ready to leave.

  “No, I want to tell you.” He pulled her back determinedly. “Our ship is leaving for Artorna tomorrow. I might be able to hide you with the cargos. I know they are likely to check our stuff at the Wintrail, but usually they’ll just pick up a few items. As soon as you’re through the pathway you’ll be safe. They can’t send military force over to the other side.”

  The news came too sudden to her. “So … so you want me to leave?”

  He looked at the window. “I know you want to go back. I knew that every time you got up in the middle of a night and looked at the sky. No, I don’t want you to leave, but I’m afraid … I’m afraid if I didn’t tell you, I wouldn’t be able to face you for the rest of my life.”

  She bit her lips tightly. Yes, she wanted to go home badly, and if he had told her this three days ago, she would’ve been happy. But she had just found out she was pregnant again! As the father, he had the right to know it. And the right of custody, at least. On the other hand, this might be the only opportunity for her to go back.

  If she didn’t tell him, though, would she be able to face herself for the rest of her life?

  When she cooked dinner that night, she still had a hard time believing that this would be the last dinner she cooked for him. She looked around the first kitchen she had ever worked in, an odd place where time had always dragged, so slowly that sometimes she felt her life could stay this way for a thousand years, until she stumbled to the end.

  “How am I going to deal with all the baby stuff?” she heard him asking at the entrance, his voice showing an attempted self-mockery. “Maybe I should try to have my own kids soon.”

  He did have his own kid, who was right inside her at the moment, but he would never know.

  * * *

  They woke up early the next morning and packed some essentials in her small handbag—it would cause suspicion if her bag was too large.

  “You’ll come visit me when the war ends, won’t you?” he asked as the car pulled out of the driveway.

  “Yes.” She managed a smile and took a last look at the small house. Through the window of the second floor she saw the mobile hanging peacefully above Kyle’s crib. When the war ended …

  After they arrived at the dock, he asked her to wait outside with Kyle and went into a long row of low buildings. Then he came out in a brown uniform and led her to a pier. Mason must have been a cheerful co-worker, for everybody they passed by waved at or chatted with him. And people seemed to be used to spouses and kids visiting their ships.

  They stopped in front of a freighter that looked like an egg with part of its shell peeled off. Several loading arms moved swiftly over the opening and filled the ship with trunks of various sizes. They entered the ship through a hatch and climbed a few stairways. Unlike a passenger ship or a large warship, the compartments of the freighter were quite narrow to enlarge cargo capacity. Mason asked Geneva and Kyle to stay in a storage room, which was half-filled with batteries, lubricants and cables.

  “We should reach the Wintrail before midnight. I may not get away at lunchtime, but I’ll definitely bring dinner. You have the milk?” he said as he bent down and checked Kyle’s diaper.

  Geneva’s hand clutched her bag and nodded. There was milk powder mixed with sleeping pills in Kyle’s bottle. The wise choice was to have him take it now—if anyone passing by heard him crying, they’d be in trouble, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  “I’ll give it to him when it’s time,” she said softly.

  Mason’s lips moved but didn’t say anything. A loud bell rang inside the ship, signaling the departure. He nodded to her briefly, stepped out of the room, and shut the door.

  * * *

  Geneva thought she was lucky when Kyle fell asleep in her arms after the ship departed. He woke up around lunchtime and drank some milk from the bottle that had no sleep pills. However, the storage room wasn’t kid friendly and soon he got bored and flew into a tantrum. She quickly poured some water into the drugged bottle. Being fed already, though, he refused to take more milk.

  “Please! Kyle, please drink it!”

  He squealed. She covered his mouth with a hand and clasped him with her legs. Then she thrust the bottle into his mouth. He choked and coughed as the milk was forced in, his brown eyes staring at her with fear.

  I’m going to kill my baby … Tears flowed down her face, but she continued.

  * * *

  She didn’t touch the food Mason brought over for dinner. Every now and then she placed her hand in front of Kyle’s nose to make sure he was still breathing. Tomorrow morning she and Kyle would be out of the enemy’s system, but today seemed to last forever.

  A few hours after dinnertime, she sensed a gradual reduction of the speed. Breathing faster, she switched off the light and crouched in the darkness. Please! The ship should start moving again after a short break! She waited and waited. It was too quiet. The break was too long. She had a bad feeling that something had gone wrong.

  The door opened ajar, and she heard Mason whispering, “Geneva, still here? Come out!”

  Her numb legs could barely walk. “Something’s wrong?”

  He took over the sleeping Kyle and asked her to follow him. They hurried through a narrow stairway to a lower floor and entered a room where two pinnaces were parked side by side. After they each put on a spacesuit, he wrapped Kyle in an oxygenated bag designed for babies and pets, and hurried Geneva into one of the pinnaces with him.

  “I don’t know why,” he said to her through the intercom and started the engine, “but they are running a check for stowaways. We have to get out of here.”

  “Wait, Mason.” She held his arm. “This is a large ship. You think they’ll be able to—”

  “They have powerful infrared detectors. Could be here in any minute.”

  The exit door was lifted, exposing them to the vast vacuum. Through the window she saw other commercial ships parked at their sides, with inspecting pinnaces flying around. She didn’t see any warship, but she was sure there were loads of them standing by in the distance.

  “Our pinnace is the same color as the inspectors’,” he said as he checked the readings on the control panel. “Hopefully they won’t spot us for a while.”

  “No, I don’t want to do this!” She held his arm one more time. “If they catch me, that’s fine. I was treated well there. It’s not worth it!”

  He paused and turned aside to look at her. There was something unusual in his eyes, something that distinguished him from the everyman he had appeared to be. “It’s not fine,” he said calmly. “Otherwise you and your people wouldn’t be fighting this war. There are things more important than survival. That’s how we differ from animals.”

  With a flip of his hand, the pinnace left the freighter and headed to the pathway. At first, nothing was happening. Then all of a sudden the pinnace jerked
fiercely and started rolling sideways.

  “Stay low!” she heard him shouting. She held Kyle tightly and leaned forward in her seat. The air must have leaked out since she could hear no more sound but felt the vibrations when the pinnace was hit. Heat was flowing to her body from the floor and the seat. She was sure the ship would melt before it broke into pieces …

  All the violence stopped abruptly like a running electrical shaker unplugged from the source. For a short moment, she thought she was dead, her soul lingering around her deserted body. Then she felt a throb in the bag she was holding and looked up. The top of the pinnace was completely gone, revealing a slowly rotating universe. A different universe. Several shinny ships were coming to her, but they weren’t the warships that had been trying to stop her. She turned to her left and saw Mason staring forward, his hand still clutching on the levels.

  “We’re safe!” she said, bending to check on Kyle through the transparent window on the bag.

  “Yes, you are safe.” His voice came through the intercom and gave her a shiver. She sat straight and looked back at him. He sat unnaturally stiff with sweat emerging on his pale face. She unbuckled her safety belt and checked his other side—there was a brown burn on his spacesuit.

  “Mason …” She was frightened. She wanted to ask if he was okay but didn’t have the courage.

  “I guess, this is it.” His gasps were louder than his voice. “Thought I’d die on a motorcycle.”

  “No you won’t!” She paused, looking straight ahead, like a child who played with matches and accidentally burned a house. Then slowly she began crying. “Let’s go home. We’ll stay in your house and never go anywhere! I’ll go back to the palace, and you would never have known me …”

  “This isn’t bad.” He made an attempt to smile. “Things were meant to happen this way.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have done this for me! I’m such a selfish woman! I’m pregnant with your child but didn’t want to tell you …” Her hands covered the goggles on her spacesuit and tears flowed down her face.

  “Really?” He grabbed her arm. “You’ll take care of our child, Geneva, won’t you?”

  “I’ll take care of him,” she choked. “I’ll tell him every detail I know about his father. And when he grows up, he’ll be my heir …”

  A light flashed inside his eyes. “Really? My child?” For a while, she felt his eyes were piercing into the future. Then as his breath slowed down, the voice became barely audible. “The moons did meet each other on that day, remember? But soon they separated again.” The light gradually faded. “It was … nature’s law …”

  Chapter 22

  Three days later, Geneva was sitting in her car on the way to her palace. A light drizzle quietly fell to the land where she had grown up and ruled with all her heart and passion, the place she missed everyday in the past year and a half. So quiet and benign that she no longer deserved it.

  “How did they look when they were born?” Sterling asked at her side, with Kyle standing on his lap and giggling.

  She tried to recall the newborns’ appearances. More accurately, she tried to remember how Terence had looked. Kind of ugly, even though she was the mother. “Eyes are slits on swollen balls. Very little hair, or you could call them bald. Always bubbles on their lips, like little crabs …”

  The palace came into sight, and her breath was suddenly shortened. “I don’t want to go there!” she said to the driver.

  “Where do you want to go, ma’am?”

  “I don’t want to go there!”

  Since Mason died at the Wintrail, she had been surrounded by people all the time. They inquired, consoled, and fussed around, although now she couldn’t register any specific face. She hadn’t had a chance to face the tragedy alone and wasn’t ready to deal with it yet.

  “We’ll go to my place.” Sterling told the driver an address.

  Geneva calmed down a little as the car veered away from her home, but when they stopped in front of a small house similar to Mason’s, with a garage attached to its side where she could have hid herself from that storm, she knew she couldn’t stay there either.

  “I’m sorry I changed my mind,” she said to Sterling without looking at him. She had been avoiding eye contact with him since he picked her up at the spaceport. “Now I’d like to go back.”

  He instructed the driver to go back to her palace.

  “I’m really sorry, Sterling.” Her head turned in his direction while she kept her gaze away. “I’d like to be alone tonight.”

  She could sense his disappointment and something worse than disappointment, but he didn’t protest. “Alright, have a good rest.” He handed Kyle to a nanny and quietly left the car.

  * * *

  “I’m glad to see all of you again,” Geneva said to her officers at the first meeting after she came back. Words were too pale to describe her feelings. Seeing their eager eyes, she had an urge of walking away from her desk and giving each of them a big hug.

  “I know you must have a lot to tell me, but let me start with a few things I learned at the enemy’s place. Note that the information I’m going to present may be inaccurate due to my limited memory and apprehension, and may have been outdated by now.”

  She suppressed a surge of nausea and managed to regain focus. She first talked about the needle-shaped warship and the Triumphants. She was relieved to learn that after she hinted Sterling his hypothesis was correct, her people had successfully worked out a way to counteract the Triumphants, but she hadn’t expected that they would pass on the information to their allies for free.

  “Oh, I was thinking maybe we could sell it to them, considering how much we paid to learn their techniques.” And things like the Instant Patchings.

  Her officers looked at one another. “Ma’am, it is to our own benefit to let our allies have this technique,” said Wilson.

  All right, maybe she was too stingy. She moved on to the next on her list and felt her spirit slipping downhill. “I don’t have solid evidence, but I suspect that Princess Isabella of Artorna is siding with our enemy.”

  Unprepared for the bad news, her audience looked puzzled at first.

  “That can’t be happening!” Lloyd said. “Matthew is always close to their family. And according to the Neutral Agreement, Artorna can’t provide military assistance to Thyphol or to us.”

  “There can be other types of assistance,” Oakley said to Lloyd, “which could indirectly bolster Thyphol’s aggression.”

  Like what we were trying to do with Edwards, Geneva said to herself. Seeing her officers’ reactions, she knew she didn’t overestimate the seriousness.

  “Does anyone have suggestions on what we should do, or … what I could do?” There was apology in the second half of the sentence, since she was the one who failed to befriend Edwards.

  For a while, nobody made a sound. Then she heard a voice saying firmly, “Whatever we’ll have to do, our monarch isn’t the only person responsible for all the troubles.”

  She traced the sound and saw William sitting in a corner. In the past, she always invited him for an audition before each meeting, but he had never shown up. Now he was here to support her. She had also learned that during the months she was captured, William had exhausted all of his resources in an attempt to get her back.

  “Thank you, sir.” She smiled at him, her vision slightly blurred. Then a gush of sour fluid almost made her throw up. “Let’s take a break.” She left her desk and tried to maintain a normal pace. Once she was outside, she had to run to the ladies room. After she spewed in the sink and rested for a few minutes, she opened the door and saw Sterling standing in front of her.

  “We need to talk.” He grabbed her arm and pushed her back.

  “It’s the ladies room!”

  “Why are you avoiding me? You didn’t want to see me and didn’t answer my calls!”

  “I wasn’t avoiding you,” she lied. “I just needed some time.”

  “For what? We haven’t
seen each other for more than a year! You don’t have anything to tell me?”

  She had a lot to tell him. The best and the worst parts about their enemy. Those individuals and families that could influence Pompey’s decisions. The easiest way to tell Terrence from Kyle so that she wouldn’t feed one of them twice while having the other starve … But how was she going to talk about Mason?

  “You know what I’ve been through, all those days?” He wiped his tears quickly. “I thought I’d never see you again, and I’ll never know what my sons look like …”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you everything later. Now we need to go back to work.”

  He blocked her way. “You’re not leaving this room until you let me know what happened!”

  She looked away from him and exhaled. “I’m pregnant again.”

  He made no sound, and she dared not to see his face. Why was life so absurd? The last time she was pregnant, she thought they’d have lots of time ahead to savor the good news and prepare for the little ones’ arrival. Yet when they met again, she was having someone else’s baby.

  “I’m sorry, Sterling, but I don’t think we could be together anymore.” She walked around him and left the room.

  * * *

  Since that day, their relationship went back to boss and employee, plus shared custody of Prince Kyle. Various rumors about how they broke up prevailed the country, especially after the queen could no longer conceal her second pregnancy. Some said the baby was Pompey’s or his father’s, although the timing wouldn’t match since the queen left the palace long before she got pregnant. The Righteousness Media claimed they had evidence indicating that the queen was raped by a drug dealer when she was on the run. At that point, Geneva realized, once again, that a celebrity wasn’t supposed to have secrets. She instructed her spokesman to tell the true story, and the topic was finally dropped out from the public. Whether people chose to believe it or not was beyond her control.