Shalia's Diary Omnibus

by Tracy St. John

“Yeah.” Again, I had little voice to work with. “How?”

  Betra stood up, stretching. He bent to give me a kiss. “It’s a long story. We weren’t sure you would make it. Hold on, let me com Oses and tell him. We’ve been waiting all day for this.”

  It was good to hear Oses’s voice from Betra’s portable, especially how he answered it. “Weapons Commander here.”

  “She’s awake. Awake and aware.”

  “Excellent. I’ll stop by as soon as my duties allow.”

  Betra clicked off. I managed a tired smile. “He’s on duty? He returned to work?”

  The Imdiko nodded. “His efforts in retrieving you and getting you to Medical safely put a lot of his problems to rest. That was verified with some psychological tests. Feru was satisfied he was ready to get back to work. He’s acting like his old self again.”

  “Good.” It was wonderful that Oses had overcome his trauma. Betra was okay too, from what I could see.

  I had another to worry about though. I wanted to find out about her even before the story of how they’d managed to free me of the It. “The baby?” I whispered.

  Betra drew a deep breath, his happy expression fading a touch. Oh please, no, was my first thought.

  Betra’s mood steadied, and a light smile touched his lips. “She’s like you. A hell of a survivor. Tep delivered your daughter less than an hour after we got you back from the organism’s escape attempt.”

  Shock filled me. “He delivered her? She’s been born?” It was too soon. I was only 25 weeks pregnant when they’d taken her.

  Betra nodded. “Thank the ancestors Tep had taken the precaution of hurrying her development. As it is, she’s barely able to fill my hand. She’s alive, Shalia. She was born a little over two weeks ago, and her odds improve with every minute.”

  I stared at him. My baby had been born. She was alive. The It hadn’t killed her.

  “Can I see her?” I asked.

  Betra stroked my face, comforting me. “Not yet, sweetness. You’re too weak to take out of your bed just yet. She can’t leave sterile isolation, not until she’s more developed and able to fight off bacteria and such. You both have been through the wringer.”

  “But she’s going to be okay?” My eyes filled with tears, both happy and hurting. I was a mother. Yet I couldn’t see my child. I couldn’t hold her in my arms and reassure my aching heart.

  “Tep thinks so. Her organs are developing as they should, and she’s doing as well as anyone could hope. She’s growing stronger every day.”

  I could feel exhaustion creeping up on me, trying to drag me away before I could learn all I needed to. “The It never hurt her?”

  “It didn’t get close.” Betra’s smile was tight and mean. “The pregnancy hormones protected her. Something Tep called HcG plus elevated estrogen and progesterone held the It at bay from physically reaching the baby. The organism couldn’t access enough of your brain’s functions to turn your body against her before Tep got her out. Once he did that, the only hostage left was you.”

  “How?” I asked. I didn’t have the strength to ask the rest of the question: how had they ridded me of the invader?

  Betra knew what I wanted. “Once the baby was out and Tep thought you were recovered adequately from surgery, he poisoned you. It was a slow-acting but lethal dose. We were going to lose you if you remained alive, Shalia. It was the last hope he had to save you.”

  The Imdiko’s eyes brightened as he told me the awful truth. The sorrow spilled over, streaking down his cheeks.

  “The hope was that the organism would give you up, since it had no chance of keeping you from dying. It acted spiteful enough to take you with it, though. It knew we would end it as soon as it surrendered, whether you survived or not.”

  He had to stop for a few seconds to recover. For that time, he was as speechless as I.

  “There was an antidote to the poison, which Tep and the captain told the organism about. Captain Wotref vowed to it that if it would give you up for Tep to administer the antidote, he would keep it alive in its hibernation chamber for study. He never intended to, of course. Such technology is much too dangerous to have lying around. It had to be obliterated.”

  Betra drew a deep, steadying breath. “That fucking creation knew we’d never allow it to infect another person. It fought to keep you until the very last possible moment. When it finally quit and withdrew from you, it was almost too late. Your poor body—”

  He choked up again. It was a couple of minutes before he was able to continue the story. “You’d gone through surgery to have your daughter. You were being killed from within by the poison. Several of your organs shut down during the first week. You were clinically dead twice. Somehow, Tep kept restarting you, like a balky engine. You came back. I don’t know how, but you came back.”

  He bent to kiss me then, his lips peppering soft and gentle, spring rain over my face. His tears mixed with mine, an outpouring of gratitude.

  By the time Betra stopped kissing me, darkness fringed my sight. I fought it off, wanting to hear the end of it. “The It...dead?” I rasped.

  Betra nodded. “Oses sent both of the hibernation bracelets out in a lifepod rigged to explode. The blast tore it into tiny pieces. Anything left bigger than a speck of dust was blasted by the ship’s weapons until it was dust. The organisms are destroyed.”

  Both the bracelets. With the last of my fading strength, I mouthed the name my voice would not carry. “Candy?”

  Betra smiled. “Alive. Recovering, the same as you. Tep was forced to poison her as well, with the same results.”

  His voice sounded far away. I was slipping into unconsciousness. I didn’t want to go, not until I saw Oses. Not until I thanked him and Tep and everyone else for all they’d done. Not until I’d seen my daughter’s face for myself. But I had been through far too much for my will to force it any further. I drifted off, the taste of Betra’s tears on my tongue, like a sweet elixir of life.

  June 28

  I wandered in and out of consciousness for four...or was it five days? I don’t know. It was all a jumble. Different people were there as I regained strength. Betra was present the most. Oses slept in the chair next to my bed when he wasn’t on duty. Tep was a mainstay as well, and Feru dropped by often to check on how I was coping. Katrina spent days running back and forth between my room, Candy’s, and my daughter’s. It was a couple days ago when Candy herself was brought in to visit, riding in a hover chair guided by Nobek Mihi. She appeared as pale as death and emaciated.

  “I have trouble keeping food down,” she told me after we’d wept over each other. “It’s damage from the poison, but I’ll recover. Every day, it’s better. We’re alive, Shalia.”

  We clutched skeletal hands. I knew I looked just as bad as she did. I was being fed by tubes, though Tep had me try some liquid later that day. I kept most of it down. The small victories are celebrated.

  I finally got to witness the smallest and greatest victory of them all. This morning, Tep unhooked me from the medi-bed.

  “You’ll only have a few minutes,” he warned me. He scooped me up and deposited my wasted frame into the hover chair Betra stood nervously behind. “It’s too soon for you to be up, you realize.”

  “But you understand that I’ll kick your ass if I have to wait another second to see her,” I said. What a joke. I couldn’t kick roadkill’s ass in my current state.

  Tep almost managed not to smirk at the idea. “Feru and I think it will do you more harm than good to not visit your daughter. Don’t make me regret this decision, Shalia.”

  The hover chair’s heat setting seeped into my bones. Tep wrapped me in a core temp maintenance blanket as well. Just the bare couple of seconds it took to move from bed to chair had me shivering. My system is so fouled up from the poisoning, but as Candy said, I’m alive. I was going to see my baby.

  With Betra at my side and Tep guiding the chair, we moved from my room through Medical to the quarantine section. There was a room,
a sterile chamber called Isolation, where the environment is maintained free of harmful microbes.

  To get in there, we had to pass through what Tep referred to as the ‘Scrub’. “That’s not its formal name, but it fits.” The archway that we went through detects bacteria, viruses, whatever bugs shouldn’t be in the sterile chamber. Though I didn’t feel it, anything of harm on our bodies and the chair was zapped by this device, leaving us utterly clean and pure. I wonder if the It would have approved.

  The first item I saw when we entered Isolation was the tiny incubator pod near the front of the room. Oses sat next to it. He was perched on a large cushion, his big frame bent over. His palms cupped together, resting on his lap. He was riveted on what he held.

  A shudder passed through me. Oses is huge, close to seven feet tall. One of his hands could hold a large ham with no problem. Yet I couldn’t imagine my daughter being so miniscule that I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of her cradled in those hands.

  Oses gazed up at me and smiled as I was floated over. “Here she is, warrior girl. Your mother has come at last.”

  I started to lean, to have that first glimpse, but Tep’s grip on my shoulder restrained me. “Stay still. Oses will bring her to you.”

  Oses rose up on his knee. He moved towards me, arms stretching, bringing those massive hands with their passenger closer. He placed her in the dip in the blanket between my thighs, snuggling her safely in the shallow valley there.

  She was so infinitesimal. I stared at this creature who had warded off the unstoppable It just by virtue of her presence, perhaps saving my life in the process. Her torso was wrapped in sensor-studded cloth that resembled a onesie. Her arms and legs were no bigger in girth than my thumbs. They kicked and swung, as if she would fight off a giant if it challenged her. Her face scrunched in her onion-sized bald head and she loosened a thin chirp of bravado. I’m not afraid of you, she seemed to say. Her eyes parted open just enough for me to catch the flash of purple there. Kalquorian purple with cat-slitted pupils. The shape of her lips reminded me of Weln’s, but the nose could have been Dusa’s. The strong chin made me think of Nang. There was no telling by looking at her who the father was, but one thing was for certain: I was her mother. At that moment, it was all that mattered.

  I barked a harsh laugh. My daughter turned into two, three, four and more babies as tears swam, making my sight into a prism. Here she was. Alive and unafraid. My daughter. My child.

  My touch surrounded her, the need to shelter this tiny, tiny person instinctive. “Hello, baby,” I said, my voice weak and wavering. “Hello, little girl.”

  I was almost afraid to touch her. Her skin appeared as thin as tissue paper, falling loose on her not-quite developed body. My fingertips skated fearfully over her perfect round skull, drawing trembling lines over her cheeks and jaw. She was soft, the down of a feather. I dotted the nose with my pinkie. She peeked at me again and yawned. I counted her fingers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. The same with her toes. All there. All accounted for. I peeked beneath the sensor vest she wore to assure myself everything was as it should be. She was so teeny, but so perfect. So miraculously perfect.

  She chirped again. Her fist waved in the air. I held it between my thumb and finger, and it opened. The starfish of her hand wrapped around my fingertip, holding on with a power she shouldn’t have been capable of.

  “My baby warrior,” I whispered to her. “That’s what you are, aren’t you? Tough girl.”

  “She’ll leave Nobeks trembling,” came Oses’s distant-thunder voice. “You’d better give her a good name that reflects her strength. Everyone needs to realize what they’re in for when she shows up.”

  I’d been so enraptured with my infant that I’d forgotten that she and I weren’t alone. Oses, Betra, and Tep circled us, watching with smiles eating up their faces. The Imdikos blinked back tears.

  “Did you ever come up with a name for her?” Betra asked.

  I was at a loss. “Not yet. I wanted her to have a Kalquorian name, but I don’t know any that are common for the females of your planet.” I gave Oses as wry smile. “I wish your women were separated into breeds. She should have a Nobek name.”

  My favorite warrior shook his head. “Women can never be assigned any single trait. They embody all the best characteristics of the great men of the empire: protectors, nurturers, and leaders. Women are all.”

  Tep mused, “There have been female warriors in our distant past though, before the virus killed so many off and made them nearly extinct.”

  “Women who held their own and were every bit as feared as their male counterparts,” Betra agreed. “Reog the Unstoppable, who mowed down enemies with her double-sided blades. Bany, Queen of Kolostere, who won the entire Esofu Continent. Anrel the Triumphant. With only one hundred fifty-three fighters, Anrel held off two Tragoom chieftains and their forces long enough for reinforcements to arrive at her colony and save it.”

  “Anrel,” Oses breathed with obvious worship. “One of the greatest warriors Kalquor has ever birthed. If Kalquorians had saints to pray to as you Earthers do, Anrel would have been my choice.” He stared at the tiny being kicking on my lap. “This one, surviving all she has, holding off the It, and living on with such spirit...she deserves that one.”

  I smiled down at my daughter. “With a name like that, she’ll have a lot to live up to.”

  “She will,” Betra grinned. “She has you for a mother, another great survivor.”

  “Anrel,” I said to her, tasting the name. “What do you think?”

  She let go of my finger to wave that bold fist in the air once more, as if proclaiming her rightful title. We laughed.

  “Anrel it is,” I said.

  May she live long, happily, and with a lot more peace than her mother has found thus far.

  July 5

  I am finally to the point where I can glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel. I can look forward to getting out of Medical pretty soon, we think. Not that I won’t be spending a lot of time in here once I’m sprung. Anrel has a while before anyone will be comfortable with her being discharged. She continues to grow in quarantine. Thanks to Tep’s efforts, her organs were developed enough to allow her a better chance of survival outside of the womb, but she’s not quite there. Her lungs in particular need to strengthen.

  Yet she is thriving in her sterile surroundings. In a few weeks, Tep will begin to allow a more natural environment, letting her acclimate to the real world’s host of microorganisms, bacteria, and the like. He says the antibodies I shared with her remain strong, and she should be able to adjust. My fighter can show off how tough she is in the weeks ahead.

  That child may end up hopelessly spoiled by everyone on this ship. At first, I was worried for her lying there in Isolation all by herself. I might as well have saved my concern. I don’t think there is a second when someone isn’t in the room with her, holding her and cooing. I wonder if she’s spent more than five minutes in her incubator. When I’m brought in to hold her, I find someone else there loving my baby. Betra, Oses, Katrina, Feru, many of the women, and even Captain Wotref and his clanmates keep Anrel company. She does not want for attention for a single second. The tiniest Matara has everyone wrapped around her so-small pinkie.

  All traces of the poison they used on me to scare the It out are gone. I am healing and growing stronger, as my Anrel is. I can sit up on my own now and even stand for a few minutes at a time. Candy is already taking short walks in Medical, building her strength up too. I cheer her from my bed or chair as she passes my door. She grins and gives me a thumbs-up. She’s not able to bounce like she normally does yet, but she’s back to smiling and doing her hair to look pretty for her favorite visitors Mihi and Ama. She may get out of here as soon as tomorrow.

  I’ve got my own two fellas coming in regularly to keep my spirits up. Betra and Oses continue to spend as long as they can with me. Well, at least when they’re not fawning over their ‘niece’ as they
refer to Anrel. Today, I received extra attention, which I am still recovering from.

  I had sat with Anrel for half an hour, the longest I’m allowed at a stretch in my present condition. My guys came to fetch me when that was up. Katrina came in with them, ready to dote on her honorary grandchild.

  My arms feel empty when I have to hand Anrel off. Not that she’s an armful at all...she’s growing, but continues to be barely a palmful for Oses. Yet that miniscule weight is tremendous when she’s not there.

  Betra kissed my morose face as I watched Katrina snuggle my baby. Anrel made the chirpy noises that I imagine are her way of expressing happiness. Oses guided my chair out into the main part of Medical. Too soon, he lifted me into my bed. Despite my fatigue, it was the last place I wished to be.

  “Soon you’ll be together constantly,” Betra reassured me, arranging my pillow for comfort. “This is only a short pause in a long life of joy with your child.”