by Black, Tasha
The gods had already seen fit to leave him to toil on the pleasure ships. No sooner did his brothers break him out to find honest labor elsewhere than he had found himself waking from stasis on an abandoned ship with a baby to care for. And now his true mate had appeared out of nowhere, but would not make the tiniest effort to bond with the boy. Or even babysit him for a couple of minutes.
But for now, at least, his problems were simpler. If they didn’t get through this door, there would be no food.
And if there was no food, the child would not survive.
“Angel, you are going to have to try to make this easier for him,” Peter said firmly. “Haven’t you ever held a baby human before?”
“I don’t think so,” she said, her nose wrinkled.
“Surely you were a baby once,” he said.
“Well, maybe,” she conceded. “But I don’t remember a thing about it.”
“Babies like to be held close and warm,” Peter said. “They like a gentle voice. They like singing.”
Angel nodded slowly.
Peter began to hum softly. Slowly, he danced the boy over to Angel.
Tchai’s legs kicked out again, but when Peter put an arm around Angel and danced with them both the kicking stopped.
They swayed like that for a minute. It was awkward, and then suddenly it wasn’t.
Peter met Angel’s eyes over the baby’s head.
She nodded.
Peter felt her hands slide around Tchai’s little body. He slowly released the child as Angel continued to sway and hum.
There was no angry cry, so he let go. It would be better to shift now and get back sooner, than to wait until the child suspected foul play. The little human was wickedly clever to be so small.
Peter felt himself drop to the ground as the transformation took hold.
The world went dark, but wavering images lifted out of the blackness.
He was seeing heat, the only stimulus that mattered to these eyes.
Quick as a thought, he slipped through the ventilation duct so that he could discover what was on the other side of the sealed door.
7
Angel
Angel watched after Peter in horror.
A snake. He just turned into a snake.
It was truly a nightmare. Angel was terrified of snakes. She always had been. Her mother blamed a particularly passionate rendition of the Adam and Eve story at Sunday school for starting Angel off with an early paranoia about snakes. But Angel found her fear to be perfectly legitimate and sensible. Snakes were dreadful.
The end of Peter’s silvery tail knocked BFF21 all the way under the door and then disappeared through the vent.
She was alone now.
It was worse than being alone, actually. She had a baby.
Tchai seemed to be relaxed enough in her arms. At least he wasn’t fussing, or doing the thing with his legs. And if he had that look on his face, she couldn’t see it, since he was facing over her shoulder.
She took a deep breath and willed herself to remain calm.
Could babies smell fear? Had she heard that somewhere?
No, that was probably dogs. And definitely snakes.
She began to pace a little.
The baby smelled really nice, so that was good. His little body was warm too, and just the right weight to feel good in her arms.
She had almost convinced herself that things were going to be okay when something slammed into the wall right in front of her.
She stepped back reflexively, pulling the baby closer to her chest.
The thing that had almost hit them was huge and inky black.
Though it had hit the wall with the force of a wrecking ball, it had flattened on impact, absorbing the blow without any damage.
Before her eyes, it slowly peeled itself off as if it were made of liquid spaghetti. It had no eyes and no definite limbs as far as she could see.
Its entire body pulsed and boiled in a way that repulsed Angel on some basic level she didn’t understand - it triggered some part of her primitive mind that ran even deeper than her fear of snakes.
There was a hiss and a whir from under the door.
BFF21 flitted up to her. The origami drone’s form looked even tinier and more delicate than usual in front of the gigantic squid-like creature on the wall behind her.
“BFF21,” Angel breathed.
“I awoke when my proximity sensor went off again,” the little drone called to her.
“What is this thing?” Angel asked. “Is it a Gryven?”
“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” BFF21 said.
“Worse?”
“My databases contain information on over 243 million known species,” BFF21 said. “And this is not one of them.”
“Oh no,” Angel moaned.
The thing had pulled itself almost completely off the wall now. It swelled up to an incredible height, looming down at Angel.
“The good news is that they will probably name this one after you,” BFF21 said brightly. “If you survive.”
Angel spun around, ready to run.
Before she could move, something solid wrapped around her leg like a vine.
“Peter,” she called at the top of her lungs.
She reached into her pocket for the baton, relieved to feel its smooth handle under her fingers.
But the creature wrapped another tentacle around her waist, locking her hand in her pocket in a viselike grip so tight it nearly broke the skin.
Angel willed herself to remain calm.
She still cradled the baby in her left arm. He was safe for now.
Fight smarter, Angel.
She heard her brother’s voice in her ear.
They had done combat training in preparation to apply for the Space Cadet program. But Anthony had always been bigger and stronger than Angel. She couldn’t match him with brute force. She had to learn to be patient and look for an opening if she wanted to win.
Unfortunately, it didn’t look like she had many moves left. The thing had her practically cocooned.
The next tentacle slid over her breasts, locking around her rib cage until she could hardly breathe.
Another wavered through the air toward Tchai.
Something snapped in Angel’s mind.
“No,” she screamed, wrenching her pinned arm roughly.
The creature pulled back very slightly at the sudden eruption and she managed to free her hand.
But the baton clattered uselessly to the floor as the tentacles tightened again.
Angel watched in horror as a fourth tentacle formed itself into a wicked looking claw.
It struck with the speed of a cobra.
Angel instinctively moved her face into its path to block it from harming the baby. She closed her eyes and steeled herself for agony.
But it never came.
She opened her eyes to see Peter’s hand, holding the claw back.
The thing released her and gathered itself up. Three tentacles remained on the floor, and the rest of it swelled up again like a storm cloud above Peter’s head.
Angel ducked and grabbed for the baton.
In her haste, her finger tightened the activator, setting it off for a brief moment before the baton slipped completely out of her shaking hand.
It crackled against the section of flooring where the evil thing stood.
The creature made a horrible shrieking sound, then seemed to turn in on itself, like a tornado in reverse.
Before Angel’s amazed eyes, it fled into the vents, slicing itself into sections to squeeze through.
“Are you okay?” Peter demanded.
She gaped wordlessly at the vents.
“Angel,” he said, grabbing her by the shoulders.
In her arms, Tchai began to cry.
8
Peter
Peter watched with relief as the baby’s cry seemed to spark something in his intended mate.
“Hey, buddy, it’s okay,” Angel told Tchai. “
We’re okay.”
Tchai stopped crying but his lower lip still pushed out in a pout. He reached his little hand up and grabbed a big hunk of Angel’s hair.
“See, it’s okay,” she said. Peter wasn’t sure if she was trying harder to convince the baby or herself.
Tchai used his hold to yank her closer.
Peter’s heart melted as the baby leaned his little head into Angel’s, finding comfort in her closeness.
“Oh, that’s so nice,” Angel crooned. “I love you, too, buddy. We’re a good team.”
“Thank you,” Peter said softly.
She held Tchai close to her chest and he tucked his head under her chin, still holding the hank of hair in his chubby fist.
“You saved us,” she said softly.
“I saw what you did to protect him,” Peter said. “I came as fast as I could. It was good that you screamed.”
“You were just in time,” Angel said.
Peter shuddered at the idea of what would have happened if he had been even a second later.
“The door is unblocked,” he said. “Do you feel ready to keep going?”
“That thing’s not out there, is it?” she asked.
“My proximity scan doesn’t show any other presence,” BFF21 said.
Peter shook his head.
“That noise it made,” he said. “Something bothered it.”
“Do you think it was afraid of the baton?” Angel asked hopefully.
“It’s possible,” Peter said. Though honestly, he wasn’t sure.
He’d duked it out violently with the thing more than once and barely escaped with his life. If he didn’t have his accelerated shifter healing, he probably wouldn’t have made it. A quick electric shock from a primitive weapon couldn’t be enough to really concern that thing.
He bent to retrieve his sweats and pulled them on.
Angel grabbed her baton, collapsed it back to its shortest length, and then slipped it into her pocket.
Peter opened the door and then stepped back out into the corridor.
“Coast is clear,” he said, poking his head back in.
“He’s right,” BFF21 crowed as she zipped out into the hall.
Angel followed, with Tchai in her arms.
“Do you want me to take him?” Peter offered. “He gets heavy after a while if you’re not used to him.”
“I’m good for now,” Angel said a little too quickly.
Peter watched her dip her face slightly. She was inhaling the baby’s perfectly satisfying scent. He knew because he had done it himself dozens of times each day since the little one had burst into his life.
A human would make a good mate for a barbarian who has a human son, a little voice in the back of his head remarked.
“You handled yourself pretty well back there,” he told her. “Where did you learn that?”
“Oh, my twin brother, Anthony, and I used to wrestle,” she said, her face brightening. “We used to do everything together. We took a combat class when we were trying to get into the Space Cadets.”
“He’s a cadet too?” Peter asked, wondering why they would have split up.
“He had a higher score on his entrance exam, so he was accepted before me,” Angel explained. “He was actually part of the very first wave of Cadets. I was supposed to meet up with him once I got deployed.”
She grew quiet again.
Peter thought that through.
“So you’re a second-wave Earth Space Cadet?” he asked.
She nodded.
“But you got here recently?” he asked.
“How did you guess?” she asked, turning to him.
You’re not like the others.
“You don’t know what a barbarian is,” he said, hoping his voice wasn’t bitter.
“I was in stasis for a while,” she said slowly.
It hit Peter that she might not know how much time she had lost. The way she was talking about her brother…
“Now I’ll never see him again,” she said tightly.
So she knew.
“I’m so sorry,” he told her, thinking back to the moment after waking when he’d noticed the position of the stars through the portal. “I know how you feel.”
She frowned.
She must have been wondering how he could possibly know how she felt.
It was a fair point, but only because she didn’t know his own story.
“Look around you,” he said gently. “Do you recognize the style of the ship, the technology? Does it look similar to what you might have found in your own time?”
She nodded slowly.
“It shouldn’t. If this ship were built today I don’t even know what it would be made of or how it would be designed,” Peter told her. “In my time that drone of yours would have been the property of a princess, not a privateer.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“When I first woke up I didn’t realize how long I’d been out,” he told her. “Then I looked out the portal. Some star maps and simple calculations gave me a pretty good idea.”
He shook his head, trying to lose the memory of the anguish he’d felt.
“You were alone?” Angel asked.
He nodded.
“Until you two came along,” he said.
He’d lost two years to the pleasure ships. And he’d lost two centuries to stasis. At least he didn’t remember that part.
He had lost so much, but he had gained a mate and a son. They were worth every sacrifice that had come before.
He was beginning to believe in fate again, and the will of the gods.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he told her, pausing in front of the window that looked out on the biodome in the center of the ship.
He had always thought maintaining a living forest onboard to be another foolish human indulgence. But suddenly, the need to surround yourself with the things that made you feel like you were home didn’t feel so foolish anymore.
“Me too,” she said.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world to wrap an arm around her shoulders as they continued down the corridor.
9
Angel
Angel felt a deep sense of contentment the moment the big alien’s arm went around her.
Maybe it was just the vestiges of the adrenaline running through her system, but she felt hopeful, really hopeful, for the first time since she’d been awoken from stasis. With the child in her arms and the man by her side, they felt like… well, a family.
That wasn’t something Angel had expected to feel again.
Even the forest in the biodome hadn’t seemed so creepy. She couldn’t help but picture the three of them lounging in a clearing on a sun-dappled picnic blanket, Tchai playing in the grass as Peter fed her fresh strawberries.
She shook her head, as if it might help to clear her thoughts. Going down that road was dangerous.
“The galley’s up ahead,” Peter said. “This next door leads to the archives.”
Angel looked at the plain door to her left.
Behind it there were answers to the questions about the baby. Answers Angel was beginning to realize she might not want.
“Do you really want to do this?” Peter asked, echoing her thoughts.
Tchai was warm against her chest, one small hand still wrapped in her hair.
She nuzzled his little head.
“We owe it to him,” she said at last. “And maybe there’s something in there that would disprove what we think. Maybe the information in that room will set him free.”
Peter nodded, looking uncertain.
“Whatever’s in there, he deserves to know,” Angel said. “One day he’ll want to learn about himself. How can we tell him there was information right in front of us, and we were too afraid to look?”
Peter nodded.
Angel took a deep breath and turned the handle.
It didn’t budge.
“It’s locked,” BFF21 said cheerfully.
“Thanks
,” Angel said, shaking out her wrist.
“There’s no DNA pad,” Peter said.
“It’s a combination lock,” BFF21 said.
She hovered near the side of the door. As soon as she got close, a series of numbers and letters lit up on the doorframe.
“Neat,” Angel said. “But now we can’t get in.”
“Oh, I can break the combo,” BFF21 said. “Just give me a few minutes.”
“Should we get food while we wait?” Angel asked Peter.
“Sure,” he said. “We’ll be down that way, behind the red door.”
“Aye, aye,” BFF21 said.
The little drone folded herself into a point and began testing out combinations so fast that she looked like a tiny blur.
Angel and Peter continued down the hallway with the baby.
“It will be good to distract ourselves with a meal while she works,” Peter remarked.
Angel had never been a big fan of food and cooking, and since waking up on the Stargazer she was even less into it.
But at least in this new world no one else liked to eat either. On the Stargazer they choked down their powdered meal substitutes begrudgingly and that was that.
Food was fuel.
It was hardly what she would call a distraction.
Peter removed his arm from her shoulder to open the door for them.
It opened to reveal a dining hall with floating glass table tops and benches under a glass dome with a breathtaking view of the stars.
“Wow,” Angel said. She knew it wasn’t really glass, at least not the kind she was used to. Earth glass would never have been able to withstand that kind of pressure.
“The tables and benches are held up with wires, you’ll see them when you get closer,” Peter said.
“It’s still incredible,” Angel told him.
“Okay, I’m going to see what they have here,” Peter said.
Angel sat on one of the benches and pulled her pack off her shoulder. She had her doubts about whether anything that had been in the kitchen for more than a hundred years would be worth eating. But she was pretty sure she had a milk substitute in her bag. If she mixed it with a vitamin C drop and a carb packet it would do nicely for the baby.