by Calista Skye
The world spun around him as the realization set in. She was gone.
For a moment he was stunned.
“No, no, no ...” He searched the tent wildly, throwing bedsheets and objects around, desperate for a sign that he was mistaken.
There was something white on the floor. He froze, then squatted down and picked it up with a hand that was trembling worse than it had since the Fire Planet, many years ago.
An elereon flower, so delicate and beautiful, even in its fossilized state. But now it was in two pieces - the stem was broken in half.
No, she was definitely not coming back.
He slowly rose, feeling numb, then went back out on feet that felt like lead and looked up. Already the ghostly glow from the intrasystem drive in her dropship was just a blue pinprick among the other stars in the sky.
At least she had not gone quietly. He couldn't help a part of him being pleased by that. She had the warrior in her.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His throat had a raspy soreness in it now that he hadn't felt since childhood. Yes, she had the warrior in her, just like he had seen from the first moment.
Well, it had to happen at some time. She was so far above him in every way that it was only a matter of time before she realized the ridiculous discrepancy between him, the primitive grunt, and her, the ambassador from the stars. A couple? She and him? Such a childish dream. But he had entertained it for a while now.
Or was it that she had somehow accomplished her alien mission, and he was no use to her anymore? Or, judging from the way she left, perhaps he had been no use to her at all and she was angry that she had wasted her time on him.
He nodded. That would fit.
Spirits damn it! He had thought that she was sincere. He had thought that she really did ... well, perhaps not love him, exactly. She was a glamorous alien from far away, a close friend of Queen Harper's, so that was probably not on the table. And of course, his burned face wouldn't help. But he'd gotten the feeling that she at least cared a little for him.
Had she really faked it? If so, he had been completely taken in.
If Charlotte was an alien agent, then she had come very close to succeeding without even knowing it. His experience with her had given him second thoughts about the bomb mission. He had even tried to downplay her role in the squad when he talked to his co-conspirators earlier that evening. If they had realized how important she was to both him and the squad, and that her very existence and personality was getting Cori'ax to waver in his determination to rid Acerex of the Earthlings, then she would have been in extreme danger. Bandi'ex was a deadly enemy.
What had he said? Bed warmer? Well, it was better than the truth; a crucial influence. It was a concept any warrior would understand, and-
He froze as a thought suddenly hit him. Was it possible that she had overheard? The timing would be pretty right. Only a few minutes after the men had left his tent, he'd heard the dropship screaming overhead.
But no. He shook his head. Surely her Acerex wasn't good enough yet for her to understand that conversation in High Warrior, the special dialect. The chance was too remote. And she never came to his tent anyway. He always came to hers.
No, she had finished her mission and that was it. If anything, it was a good enough reason for him to be even more determined to remove the Earthlings from Acerex space once and for all.
He nodded as he felt the old certainty fill him anew. Only Acerex allowed on the Acerex homeworld. If the Earthlings wanted to conquer, they had to do it the hard way, not the sneaky way.
And if Charlotte was on the Friendship when the bomb went off?
The mere thought made him draw his breath in horror, but he forced himself to think it through to the end.
Well, then ...
He felt a sharp pain from his hand. The fossilized flower had cut deep into his flesh when he tightened his fist around it, and blood was flowing from his palm.
Well, alien agent or not, he knew he couldn't live with having harmed her. So if she died there, then he just had to make sure that he died, too.
After tonight, after her leaving, it would feel like a relief.
17
- Charlotte -
“Pretty close to full term, I'd say. If this was an ordinary situation. But I suppose it hasn't been even six months yet? Yeah, these half-Acerex pregnancies can develop fast. Harper's was pretty normal, but Lily's was so short we kind of panicked when she sauntered in here, all casual, telling us the water had broken. At just over six months. Of course you know that already. Oh, you can get up now.”
The doctor sat down and Charlotte got to her feet from the padded bench. The equipment had only taken a second to scan her abdomen and display every piece of data about the baby on the doctor's pad.
She sat down across from him. “Yeah, Lily told me all that. It can be pretty fast, especially towards the end, right?”
Doctor Heming nodded. “Yep. It's interesting. The children seem to have no ill effects from the short gestation time. Their brains develop normally, except much faster than we're used to. It doesn't even seem to take that much of an added toll on the mothers. On the contrary, I'd say. They're similar to the easiest pregnancies I've ever seen on Earth.”
“Yeah. I know Harper and Lily were both very active even close to the delivery.”
Heming had followed both pregnancies very carefully, as the senior medical officer on the Friendship. Both women had allowed him to give any information about their pregnancies to later expectant mothers, partly releasing him from the doctor/patient confidence code. “True. And you seem to be following Lily's pattern. I can even say that the birth itself will probably not be too strenuous on you, even though the baby will be larger than most Earthling newborns.”
Charlotte wasn't relishing the idea of the actual process of giving birth, but she wanted to know as much as she could glean from the doctor. “So nothing that can't be handled by any midwife robot?”
“Oh, the robots can handle pretty much anything. Most expectant mothers do seem to want some human company, but it's not really necessary. The robots are getting seriously good.”
Charlotte smiled, relieved. “Sure you should say that, doc? I mean, if they're that good, your profession might soon be gone.”
Heming shrugged. “Nah, I don't think so. People still want humans treating them. Or at least, they want the illusion that humans are treating them. At worst, human doctors will just stay in the room and oversee the robots doing their stuff. One thing the robots can't do is give that human touch. At least not yet. Okay, Charlotte, the baby is extremely healthy. I see no problems at all. Just stay nourished and hydrated. I wonder, is the father in the picture?”
Charlotte looked out the window behind the doctor. The planet Acerex hung outside like a huge, blue-green disk. His family was there. He was not. “No. It was a short-lived thing.”
“Very well. I just ask because it might be useful to know something about him. This is still only the third Earthling/Acerex pregnancy in history.”
The suggestive tone was obvious, and Charlotte sighed. How to describe Cori'ax to someone who hadn't lived with him? “Big even for an Acerex warrior. Tall and wide. Reckless, but still calculated. Smart as a whip, but doesn't know it. The charisma of a supernova. A natural leader. Huge physical strength. Immense agility. Moderately strong morals. And the best actor the universe has ever seen.”
The room was quiet for three heartbeats, and Heming nodded in sympathy as he made some notes on her pad. “An actor, huh? He sounds unusual. They're normally not that good at acting like anything other than they are, the Acerex. Totally straightforward, mostly.”
“Yeah, well. Trust me to find the exception to that rule.”
The doctor finished writing. “So he's big and strong. Then the baby probably will be large, too. How are your eating patterns?”
“I am eating a lot more than usual, but I don't seem to be getting fat. It all goes to the baby, I guess.�
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“It does. I suppose one reason why the pregnancies develop so fast in mixed babies is that Earth food is a lot more nourishing than Acerex food. But who knows. Make sure you get your omega three.”
“I will.”
The doctor looked up from his pad and smiled. “So, you want to know the gender?”
Butterflies took off in Charlotte's stomach. This was one of the reasons she was here. The answer to that would decide so much.
She nodded calmly. She had to play it cool. “I absolutely do.”
18
Two weeks later
- Charlotte -
“I can't believe it was always this run-down!”
Henrietta glanced over at her. “But it was much worse than this back then, Charlotte. It's nicer now. See the streetlights? This area was always pitch black at night. And they filled the potholes.”
The car shuddered hard and Henrietta tightened her seatbelt. “Well, you know. Most of them.”
It was the same old city. Of course the buildings and streets and plazas seemed smaller now than they had when she grew up there. Everyone said that when they visited their hometown after a long absence. But not everyone felt that the gravity in their hometown had changed. It hadn't, of course. It was still standard Earth gravity, but Charlotte's long time on Acerex and various battle planets and on the Friendship had made her sensitive to things like that.
She'd rented an electric car, deactivated its autopilot and taken control herself, like any pilot would do in any vehicle. Then she'd looked up Henrietta, a childhood friend, the only person in town she thought she could stand to deal with because they'd had pretty similar lives up until Charlotte took off.
In the six years since they'd last talked, her friend had managed to get married, have three kids, get divorced and then get married again. When talking to her, Charlotte got the feeling that the second divorce wasn't far away.
She hadn't been to Earth since she left for space. But she had wanted to see it again, maybe to get away from Acerex and the things that reminded her of Cori'ax, which was everything. Or maybe to give her home planet one more chance to win her back.
So far, it was making no attempt to do so. The town where she'd grown up wasn't that typical for Earth, perhaps. But she'd wanted to see it again, try to see it with new eyes and maybe change her opinion about it. After less than a day, she already knew she wouldn't.
They rolled slowly along Main Street. The store windows were mostly empty.
“Gosh,” Henrietta said, “so weird to see this town like a tourist. And you know, you're right. It actually is kind of crappy.”
Charlotte steered around another deep hole in the street. “Ever talk to anyone from the old gang? I mean, the girls from our high school class?”
Henrietta laughed. “You kidding? I never see any of them. Never knew them that well, either. You know how it was. Some girls had families and some didn't.”
“Yeah. What was it they called us? 'The social services kids' or something? Wasn't there some kind of code word?”
“The FHK. The Foster Home Kids.”
“That was it. The eff aitch kay. They'd whisper that among themselves when we were walking up, making sure we heard it. At least there were two of us, huh? Etta, if I'd been alone back then ...”
“Char, don't even talk about it. Shit, if I hadn't had you ... but then you just up and left! And then you went into space and got world famous without even being here.”
Charlotte glanced sideways at her friend. “Famous? I mean, sure, Harper married the alien king, so I get that she's really well known. But me, too?”
“Oh, you bet. You made first contact with the super hot aliens. After that Harper girl. Didn't the mayor invite you or something? To City Hall? But you never showed. They had your school photo on the local news. Oh, and national news, too. And some kind of military picture with you in a uniform. That was the first I'd heard from you in years.”
“Yeah. Sorry. If it makes you feel better, that was the first anyone on Earth had heard from me in years.”
Henrietta nodded. “You don't have much reason to want to come back, do you? At least I have some extended family. Not that I ever see them.”
They passed their old high school. There were more fences and walls around it now. The graffiti was as crude and ugly as ever.
Charlotte accelerated to not have to look at it. “There's not much here for me. Except maybe some memories. Not all of them are bad, though. You know how it is.”
“Yeah. If we'd been able to see our own lives as kids with our adult eyes now, we'd be shocked. But when you're a kid, and you're living it, it doesn't always seem so bad. Or even most of the time. Hey, I got some birthday presents sometimes.”
“Me too. Not every year, but who's counting.”
Henrietta tapped her lips with one finger. “You know, I discovered there's actually nothing wrong with foster homes. Most of those are really good. We just stumbled upon a couple of crappy ones.”
“I know, Etta. We did.”
“It's a pretty crappy town, I guess. Hey, we didn't choose our beginnings. But we both survived. That has to count for something. We weren't stopped by some black eyes and bruises that we tried to cover up. We made it, Char.”
Charlotte took in the gray concrete and the worn asphalt and the empty stores and the trash lining the street. It was worse than she remembered. “We kind of grew from sheer rock. Got our nutrition from the rain and the air.”
Henrietta looked at her from the corner of her eyes. “Um. Sure. I guess. I mean, I got some food almost every day, but ...”
Charlotte laughed. “Don't mind me. This pregnancy's got me saying some weird stuff.”
“Uh-huh. Yeah, those things can mess with your mind and everything else. Believe me.”
Charlotte turned off Main Street and the car rolled slowly through a residential area. Had the houses always been this ugly? “You know, Etta, you're right. We don't choose our beginnings. But sometimes, once in a blue moon, the luckiest of us can choose how we continue.”
“Damn right. You've chosen space. The aliens. I don't blame you at all. I have my kids here and all that stuff. I could never choose that. But I'm thrilled that you have. So that Harper girl got pregnant by an alien, right? Fuck, that king she married is hot. And the other ones who came here with him weren't bad either. They were on the news and in the mags for months. There's a lot of them, right? Out there? And almost no alien women? Hey, it's none of my business. But did you ...? Is it ...?”
“I did and it is. This is a half alien.” Charlotte indicated her now very obvious bump. “But it's kind of a secret for now.”
“Oh, I won't tell anyone. The first thing you learn when you grow up like we did is how to keep a secret. But congratulations, Char. That's super cool.” She hesitated and looked at Charlotte with brown, innocent eyes that probably perceived much more than anyone would realize. “It is super cool, right?”
They passed the shabby strip mall where they'd both sought refuge when they needed it the most, what seemed like many lifetimes ago. The people loitering outside it were just as shady as before. Yes, it was a miracle they'd both survived.
Charlotte forced a smile. “It is super cool. And here's the coolest part: it's a girl.”
- - -
The ship detached from the space station in Earth orbit and the engines engaged, something the passengers only noticed as a soft push in their seat.
Charlotte laid her head back and looked up. The blue-white-green disk looked so much like Acerex, it was like a twin. Earth and Acerex, twin planets. She was not the first to make that observation. The similarities were too obvious to miss, even for television reporters.
On one of of those twins she had a past. On the other she had a future.
Maybe. There was no way to be certain. But she would make sure that her daughter had both, and on one and the same planet.
It could not be Earth. There was nothing there for Charlotte, an
d it would be hard for her to create a good life for her child on a planet that she just wanted to put behind her once and for all. She had always felt out of place there. She couldn't be the best mother on a planet that was now much more alien to her than Acerex had ever been.
No, the Acerex people suited her much better. They were warriors. Straightforward and honorable. They fought because they had to. They loved their planet because it loved them right back.
She had a lot to contribute to them. She would show them how to win wars. She could still have a future there, as long as she didn't fall in love again.
The Earth slid slowly past the upper window as the spaceship travelled faster and faster, setting up its course to Acerex. The distance was impossible for the human mind to comprehend, but the journey wouldn't take that long. She would have time to follow her plan when she got there. And if the pregnancy progressed even faster than everyone thought, then this spaceship did have an excellent medical bay with a state-of-the-art midwife robot.
Cori'ax, for all his faults, had been right. She should remember where she came from. Not everything about the Earth was bad. And she wouldn't sever every connection with her home planet. She would stay connected with one strand. She would stay in touch with Henrietta. Now they had their children to talk about, at least.
Soon, anyway. If everything went well.
Daughters were seen as glorious blessings on Acerex, and they were often overprotected. Everyone in the village would celebrate when a girl was born, because they were so rare. Their births were recorded in the village history as a major event, while the birth of a boy didn't cause much comment.
Still, Charlotte's daughter would not be a full Acerex. Nor would she be a princess or the child of an important chief and royal councillor, like Harper's and Lily's children. She would stand out everywhere, not fully one thing or another, with no elevated rank or standing to protect her. That could be difficult for any child. And Charlotte didn't want her daughter's childhood to be difficult. She wanted it to be good.
