by Greg Curtis
“Thank you.” He could almost see tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
“You don’t need to thank me love. Not for this. How could I not be happy? I’ve knocked you up! Put a bun in your oven! Got you with child! I’m so proud of myself it sickens even me!” She giggled into his chest.
“I seem to recall having a part to play in it myself.”
“A very wonderful part. But I’m sorry to have to remind you love that you’re only a woman. As the man in this bed I believe I have to take the credit.” He got slapped as he’d expected for that, and then kissed as they both wanted.
“And as the woman here, I believe it’s my duty to tell you where the nearest air lock is.”
“You sure about it? It couldn’t be just a false alarm?” Yet he knew she was, even before she nodded. After all, she was a doctor. Uncontrollably his hand wandered down her body, coming to rest on her flat stomach. There wasn’t a sign of anything yet, but then he knew there wouldn’t be for some time to come. Surely many months. Even so, somewhere under his hand he knew there was a new life beginning, an understanding that was slowly rocking his world. In time his lips followed his hand and he kissed her still flat stomach.
“I love you. Both.”
“So what happened to your shots anyway?” He wasn’t being critical, just curious. He’d expected to have this day a long way ahead of them. Once they’d been together at least a year or two rather than a couple of months. Or at least after they’d discussed it first.
“Um, it’d been so long that I’d forgotten about them. They didn’t seem important. And then, when - well it all happened so fast, and I simply forgot about them again. And again. Every time I meant to go for one, something else just seemed to come up, and that was the end of it. Besides, I thought you were taking yours so it didn’t matter.”
He smiled broadly at her vain attempt to cast the blame elsewhere, and then kissed her perfect nose. “Don’t tell fibs my lovely security officer. You know I don’t take them. I haven’t got any for a start. I mean I spend up to a year at a time out in the middle of nowhere alone, so there didn’t seem to be much point. But quite frankly, even if I had some I would no doubt have forgotten, just like you. I’m only human. But I’m more than happy to share the blame. It took two to make this happen and I can live with that. - As long as you can.” He kissed her stomach again, and then her hand, telling her the truth of his words.
“I can.”
“Good. Now that that’s settled, boy or a girl?”
“Don’t know yet. I haven’t done the tests.” Which seemed strange to Daryl as it was one of the first things he would have done. But it didn’t really matter. He would be overjoyed with either as long as the baby was healthy. As long as they survived.
“How far along?”
“Twenty one, twenty two days.” Even in the dark he could tell she was feeling embarrassed again, and he suddenly knew why. She would have known for at least a week, as she had a med scan every time she left the station to go on board the Targ, even when it was docked. It was routine. He smiled broadly and tried not to chuckle, too loudly.
“So you’ve been hiding this from me for a week? Two weeks? Worrying about it. Typical woman.” He kissed her soundly. “Now wouldn’t it have been so much easier to come to me than, instead of waking me up in the middle of the night now just to confess?”
Hands suddenly attacked his sides, and he had to squirm as she started tickling him. Damn it was awful being ticklish, especially when she knew his weakness and wasn’t afraid to use it. “I like waking you in the middle of the night!” Which was actually true. “And I’m not confessing. I’m telling you the simple facts.”
“All right, all right.” He grabbed her hands and pinned them behind her as she’d expected. “I surrender. I was being a pain. It was a galacticly stupid thing to say and I humbly apologise.” But he couldn’t quite stop laughing as he said it, and Karen was giggling too.
“That’s more like it.” And no sooner had he released her hands then she wrapped them around his neck and kissed him as they both wanted. Already her legs were winding themselves around his hips, and she was rolling him over as she prepared to have her way with him. She just loved to be on top. But for once she was out of luck as he rolled her again, and took control.
“Sorry love. My turn to ride.” But it wasn’t about dominance, as he pinned her firmly and then took her as they both wanted. It was about making love to her so that she knew it was his desire as much as hers. He wanted her to know until the day she died that he loved her, and that he was more than happy with the knowledge of their baby to come.
“Damn!” But he noticed she wasn’t complaining too vigorously as he started thrusting, bringing out her pleasure. She was moaning though. And soon he knew, she was going to be crying. He thanked the designers that had made the walls of the station soundproof. Otherwise they would have had some terribly unhappy neighbours.
“No. Blessings love.” It was a phrase Mark had started using on him when he’d been at his most blasphemous, and now that Karen was starting to fall into some of his bad habits, it seemed appropriate to use it on her. She laughed some more.
“I told you we’d make a believer out of you.” But the words were already coming out in fits and starts as she had to pant and gasp with her ever growing pleasure.
“And I’m going to make a mummy out of you!”
“You already have you moron!” But she was laughing so hard she was having difficulty breathing, especially when she needed all her breath just to keep going. Then suddenly her body climaxed and her body went rigid while her hands started clawing at his buttocks, desperately trying to drag him in, demanding service which he was only too happy to give. She started crying with pleasure, whimpering into his chest, completely lost in the moment as he gave her his seed.
Afterwards she was calm as always, wrapped up in the afterglow of their passion, and giggling softly as she played with his chest hair while he kissed her lovely face again and again. She was exhausted and not just physically. They both were. He could see her eyes slowly closing as she contentedly headed off to sleep wrapped in pleasure.
“I love you. And I love our baby.” He whispered it to her, over and over, knowing that even though she was already moving into dreamland, she might still hear him. And he wanted her to know that, from the first moment she woke, to the last moment before she went to sleep, and to take that knowledge into in her dreams. It was important.
Finally she was asleep and her breathing was slow and relaxed. He held her close, staring at the beauty of her face and watched the way her chest rose and fell so evenly. Beneath his hands he could feel the pulse of her blood as it ran through her body and experienced again the wonder of knowing that there was a baby growing inside her. He knew then that he would never know another moment as perfect, another woman he would love so totally as the woman who lay beside him.
It seemed so right that she was carrying their child. He knew it as clearly as he knew his own name. It was simply meant to be. He had never known God before. Never understood what he was, or even really cared. But as he held her close he knew Him. He knew that in his arms he held the entire universe. The creation of life, the miracle of love. A stupid thing for a hardened scientist to believe in, but still true.
He had to protect them.
The strange thing was that he had known all of that from the first instant she had given him her news. Even before. He just hadn’t quite translated the thought into words. But the understanding that he was going to be a father was what finally made everything so clear. He wanted to give them everything he could. His love, a warm safe home, and everything else they could possibly want. But before he could do any of that, he had to protect them from the coming evil. He would protect them at all costs.
It was more than a need or a want; it was his calling. His duty, his responsibility, and his sole purpose in life. Yet he wasn’t a warrior, and he didn’t know enough to help the sc
ientists. There was only one thing he was good at. It was the only thing he could do. The only help he could give.
The odd thing was that he’d known it for a long time. Deep in his heart. He just hadn’t understood it even as he’d begun doing all the things he needed to make it happen. But there and then he finally understood.
He only prayed that Karen would.
He held her close for many more hours after that, until the morning was almost upon them, and he had no more time. Soon she would rise and when she understood his plan she would no doubt try to stop him. She would think he’d gone mad. And maybe he had. But he still couldn’t allow her to stop him. Not when she was in danger. Not when their baby was in danger. It was the sanest decision he had ever made.
It was also the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life, but somehow he found the strength and crawled out of bed, and then found the courage to leave her, knowing that he had to go. He had to hurry and he knew that she couldn’t come. He couldn't let her even if she wanted to. This was going to be the most dangerous dig he had ever attempted. But every second he dallied was a second more that the enemy had to kill her and their unborn child.
He left her a note. A few painfully inadequate words that barely explained what he had to do and why, and knew she would never be happy with it. But that it was all he could do. He didn't have the time to leave her a more complete message. And even if he'd had all the time in the universe he could never have come up with one that was right. There was no right.
As he took the Sparrow out of the Targ’s bay, and then the dock, Daryl felt tears running down his cheeks. He knew he was going to be very lucky if he ever got to see his love again. His family. More than likely he would die along the way, and Karen would never know his fate. But at least he prayed, she would eventually understand why he was going. And perhaps forgive him. And maybe before the end, he would find the knowledge that would save her, that would save them all.
A tired looking Myran buzzed him then, wondering why the ship was moving at all, especially when there were enemies out there who might spot it.
Before he had even the chance to become suspicious, Daryl activated the cloak inside the dock and hit the drives, causing surely every alarm the station had to be triggered. But it didn’t matter. The Sparrow was outside the port well before anyone could stop him.
He would have won his bet. The Sparrow made terrig ten well before it cleared the solar system, and shortly after that was cruising at just under terrig twelve. In time he hoped, he might try out some of the new wrinkles he’d added, and see if it could hit thirteen, assuming it didn’t blow up, and the faster he went the sooner he would reach his destination.
He had begun the next leg of his journey as he chased the Calderonians all the way back to the Ancients.
Chapter Seventeen.
ZF 203, reminded Daryl strongly of Calderon six. Another desert world complete with dust storms and a threatening purple haze at the furthest regions of its horizon. But this one hadn’t been created by a slowly warming sun. Its sun, a standard G type star had been relatively constant for billions of years. The planet was naturally a desert and if he was any judge, not a pleasant place to live, for him anyway.
Though after more than a month in the confined quarters of the Sparrow he most definitely needed to stretch his legs. In fact even the chance to walk five metres in a straight line without tripping over something or hitting a wall was irresistible. Not only was the Sparrow now unbelievably tight inside, what little room it did have was filled with clutter. Mainly computer terminals and analytical equipment, as he’d moved some of his now cluttered lab into the small galley.
The bare steel walls of the ship were no better. Though metal walls had never really appealed to him as an interior decoration, the masses of scrawled notes and diagrams he’d covered them with were far less soothing on the eyes again. On the other hand, they meant that when he’d gotten tired of staring at endless computer screens and multiple support keypads, he could simply lie back on the single remaining couch in the galley and review everything he’d done that day on a wall sized panorama. And sometimes it helped just to be able to relax and almost let the shear volume of data he was researching wash over him and absorb it almost by osmosis.
He’d found the planet easily enough, and for some reason the satellite in orbit above the city didn’t seem to react to him as a threat, probably, he guessed, because, his ship was cloaked with a Calderonian cloak. It either didn’t detect him, or else considered him friendly. His newly enhanced maser blew it out of the sky before it had a chance to change its mind.
The weapon was impressive he decided, as its ten centimetre wide beam literally cut the satellite in flaming halves in a hundredth of a second. It didn’t even get off a shot against him. It was no match perhaps for that of a true battleship, but still impressive. Then again, so was everything about the redesigned Sparrow.
The ship had cruised for over a month at full speed, terrig thirteen and a half, without so much as nut falling out of place. The new cruiser drive hummed all the way as if it was brand new. It didn’t even heat up, despite the extensive number of light years on it. The same was true of all the other modifications. The cloak worked perfectly, as did the modified shields and maser. Even the hellfires, which he’d only tested the once on a perfectly innocent asteroid, had done everything he could have asked for as they turned the giant space rock into dust.
At the start he’d been nervous, not truly knowing how everything would work in practice. The theory was perfectly fine, but there was a galaxy of difference between it and practice, and he’d had visions of the ship cracking up under the staggering power of the new drives. But no such thing had happened, and as his confidence had grown he’d slowly begun pushing the Sparrow harder and harder, until it was at full stretch, without a glitch. It could still go faster he knew. Without the mass of a full size heavy cruiser for it to cope with he could have trimmed the zone of negative gravity by at least half and used the surplus energy to drive it possibly to terrig fourteen. But that was something for another day. For the moment, thirteen and a half was fine as it got him safely where he needed to go almost as quickly.
It took only five weeks to get to the second of the Calderonian bases - a journey of over seventy light years! Even the Targ couldn’t have done any better, on its old drives anyway. But the real question was could he do any better than the Targ’s scientific compliment on his own? He had all their advanced tools at his fingertips, the computers were loaded with everything the Targ had held on the Calderonians, and he had the bug already modified according to his last revision. But he was still only one man taking on an entire city. A well defended city. It would be best if he could avoid conflict.
The city below was far larger than that of QA 40 as he’d guessed it would be, sprawled across at least five klicks of the planet, and he guessed that at least two of the great ships had gone into its construction. All up he estimated there were over a million apartments below, which meant at least a million dead Calderonians buried somewhere down in the soil. In fact there were probably many more as they would also have buried those who had fallen on the second leg of their journey. And this was only the second planet on their journey. The Calderonians had perhaps been a year and a bit in space by the time they'd arrived here. What would the third be like? The journey had not been easy for them.
Time he figured, to see if his months of preparation - first on the base and then during the journey out here - had been worth it. Before he’d left, he’d downloaded the latest translations of the Calderonian computer into the Sparrow’s database and started working with them. He might not be a linguist by any stretch of the imagination, but even he could identify the key words and phrases within it once the linguists had done their work. And it was vital since he’d decided early on that the way the cities identified friends from foes, was from the recognition codes they gave. And up until then they’d never had them.
But once the tr
anslations had begun and he’d noticed the odd phrases and ciphers turning up again and again, he’d understood one more thing. Each new city he found, each new computer, would give him the codes for the next. If he could figure them out.
While he hoped that the Sparrow and the Bug - now also upgraded to something far beyond what it had once been - would have the ability to defeat the city the same way they had triumphed on QA 40, he knew he didn’t have the time. It would take weeks, assuming they didn’t need to make major repairs, to destroy the bolos. And then many more after that to actually locate the vault and download its computer. He didn’t have weeks. He wasn’t even sure he had days.
Actually he didn’t know how long he had. How long the stand off between the Kaiwhare and the Force would last, or how long after that that war would break out. But he did know he wanted to be back with Karen as soon as he could. He wanted to be there to see the birth of their child. And he desperately wanted to be there to protect them from the evil that was coming for them all. Fortunately he had another option to digging. Hopefully.