But it was Torin’s baby!
She didn’t understand how that was possible.
She’d been convinced they hadn’t had any actual contact. That she’d only known him in her head and she couldn’t even be sure of exactly what part of that had been real and what part she had merely imagined.
Clearly, there had been a good deal of physical contact, though, if she was pregnant.
And she didn’t have to search far to pinpoint the time.
That one night they’d spent together after she’d followed him to that ritual—which she’d obviously been forbidden to see! That highly erotic ‘dream’ that had seemed just too fantastic to be real.
Well, it only took one time if it was the right time!
And he’d thoroughly seeded the ground!
Was she happy or horrified?
She wasn’t horrified, she realized.
Maybe she should have been, but she wasn’t.
Happy?
She wasn’t sure.
Until her commanding officer demanded to know what her intentions were toward the fetus.
“My baby, you mean?” she asked coldly, instantly protective.
Major Sandy Reddick reddened. “You know one’s the limit. Are you sure you want to take a chance on it being … defective? A human/alien hybrid at best.”
Coldness washed over Claudia, but she stood her ground. “On Earth one is the limit—but there’s no actual law that says you can’t have two—just public opinion. And Mars doesn’t have limitations like that. Anyway, they ran tests. Was there some indication that there was a problem with the baby? Because nobody said so to me.”
The Major’s lips tightened. “Nothing I’m aware of, but this fetus is only half human ….”
“That isn’t what I was told. They said half unknown race.”
“Alien.”
“But the DNA must be damned close to ours or it wouldn’t have grown at all—so race.”
“If you decide to abort, or it self-aborts, we’ll want to examine it,” the Major said tightly and turned to go.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I’ll turn it over to you to pick apart,” Claudia growled, struggling with the urge to burst into tears.
The Major paused and turned to look at her. “One way or another we’ll be examining it. You can bank on it.”
It was just as well the Major let herself out of Claudia’s quarters before she could give vent to her rage. She had time to get a grip before she reached the door. She paused with her hand on the knob, seething, but finally released it and headed back across her tiny living area and flounced on the hard thing that served as a couch.
Gravity could be damned painful.
Mars’ gravity was considerably lower than Earth’s—different from the IP Expedition’s gravity—higher than the zero gravity of the Lander.
It was hard living with a constant state of change.
She never knew when she picked something up if it would have weight.
Or if she was going to fly or flop when she moved without premeditation.
She managed to get back to the medical center before Wilkes and Reyes were released. She didn’t dare talk openly to either one, however. There were ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’ everywhere—strictly for security purposes, of course, but it was hard to do or say anything these days without being seen, heard, and recorded for the purposes of prosecution if you’d said or done anything you could be prosecuted for.
Or sued for.
She was still glad she’d gone.
Both men appeared to be almost fully recovered from their near brush with death.
Wilkes forced a grin. “I still don’t see how you could have been in better shape when they picked us up. I told them Reyes had hooked up an extra oxygen tank for you, and you’d filched the extra food, but of course that’s bullshit. They went over it. They would know.”
Claudia wasn’t certain if it was an attempt at humor, if he was hinting for information, or if he was trying to tell her the brass was curious as to how and why she’d not only survived, but been in far better shape than her companions when they were recovered.
If it was the last, she already knew they were extremely interested in any ties she’d formed with alien beings.
If he was fishing for information, she damned well had no more intention of sharing with him than she had the interrogators.
And if it was his stab at humor, he needed to work on it.
She smiled with an effort, pretending she thought he’d only said it to be humorous. “Roll of the dice, I guess, genetically speaking, is all I can figure. I’m just glad the rescue ship got there when it did.”
“That makes two of us … well, three, I’m guessing.”
He raised his bed to a sitting position before he said anything else.
“They’ve been asking me a lot of questions about aliens. I told them I hadn’t seen any.”
Claudia stared at him with a frozen smile and finally sighed. “Yeah, they’ve been pumping me for information, too.”
“What did you tell them?”
She shrugged. “I thought I was hallucinating. That’s why I didn’t tell any of you. I thought it was maybe injury from the crash or mental defect. We had enough to worry about, I figured.”
He plucked at his sheet. “They asked about Johnson … and Adams. I told them I wasn’t there when you shot Adams, but I’d reviewed the security footage after I found her and I was completely convinced you had no choice.”
Relief flooded Claudia. “I really didn’t.”
“I know,” Wilkes said, flicking a glance toward the camera in the corner. “I guess that concussion from the accident damaged more than we thought.”
Claudia caught the look and winced, hoping the watchers wouldn’t notice, because it would look damned suspicious if they did. “Maybe. I thought she just couldn’t handle the stress, but I suppose the accident might have tipped her over the edge. I’m convinced she’d been faking sleep for a while. I was almost sure that she was doing it just to get out of having to work, but I also think she was terrified and the injury gave her a chance to hide. I guess that does something to your mind.”
“To anybody’s mind if it’s something you have to deal with long. But there are always some people who can handle things way better than others. I’m sure it was cumulative. Johnson wasn’t acting right after the crash either.”
Claudia nodded and then shrugged. “I thought he just saw an opportunity to seize power,” she said dryly. “It never did sit well with him that you were made commander. That’s what I told them, anyway, that that was the way I saw it. When are they going to let you out of here?”
Wilkes brightened noticeably. “They said this evening.”
Claudia chuckled. “Well don’t get your hopes up that things are going to be better. They’ve interrogated me daily since I got out—hours upon hours of every damned day, hoping, I think, that I’m suddenly going to remember things I don’t. The quarters they assigned suck worse than the sleeping accommodations on the Lander and the food is worse, too.”
Wilkes grimaced and then released a long suffering sigh. “Well, it won’t be worse than being tied to the bed.”
“Ha! You think that now!” Claudia threw at him as she headed for the door.
“You heading down to see Reyes and spread cheer?” Wilkes asked.
That drew a genuine laugh. She turned and threw a bye-wave at him. “Yep! That’s where I’m headed—to spread cheer. Can’t leave Reyes out.”
Reyes still looked a little gray—as if he’d fared worse than Wilkes.
Which, she supposed, would be understandable since he was the oldest member of the crew. “How are you doing, big guy?” she asked as she dragged up a chair to the side of the bed and took his hand.
“Careful,” he muttered under his breath, “they’ll think I fathered the youngun’.”
Claudia felt her face heat. “They told you?”
He made a sound that w
asn’t really a laugh. “They accused me. They know Wilkes don’t go that way and Johnson didn’t make it.”
“Bastards!” Claudia muttered.
“I told them it was me,” he whispered, “but then they said it was alien and I told them I was, too, ‘cause my folks were illegal aliens ….”
“I bet that went over well."
He grunted as he moved closer to speak in a lower tone. “Watch yourself. That Rogue? Well it decided to settle in and stay, slipped right in between Earth and Mars as pretty as you please—like they were parking it. Blew everybody’s mind.
“Then, as soon as they’d cleaned their pants, they started thinking it could be a life-safer for Earth. It’s almost the same size and waking up now that it’s close enough to get warm.
“Then they found out you were pregnant and that meant neighbors, not just a new planet. And they’re not so happy about that.
“That’s what’s behind the buildup of the military here. They’re afraid we’re about to be invaded.”
The comments had thrown Claudia into complete chaos. She’d gone out as soon as she was able to and searched the sky for the Rogue, but she’d thought she was seeing it flying off into space, not moving into orbit close enough it could be seen from both Mars and Earth, she was sure.
It hadn’t occurred to her, once, that Torin might still be alive, might still be close enough that he wasn’t lost to her forever—or at least that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that he would be and that she would never know if he had survived or not.
Of course, she was getting ahead of herself to assume he was still alive.
And maybe the ‘powers’ had done that? Simply assumed he was still alive because there had been living beings on the Rogue planet when they were there?
And maybe not. Maybe they’d made contact?
Maybe Torin had contacted them about her safety, she thought hopefully?
He could have contacted her directly, she realized almost immediately, feeling crestfallen.
Before she got too deeply submerged in self-pity, though, she realized Reyes had warned her of danger.
“You honestly think I’m in some sort of danger?” she asked uneasily.
“I honestly think you need to watch your ass,” Reyes responded. “I’m dead serious. I don’t think they know, yet, that Torin is the leader or king or whatever, but they will when they make contact. And that’s definitely going to happen. They’re in our backyard. The government is going to want to know how dangerous they are and if they’re a threat or willing to negotiate some kind of agreement. You can be sure they’re already wondering if you would be useful in the negotiations.”
A nurse abruptly breezed into the room, ostensibly to check on Reyes to see if he needed anything, but it would have been a lot easier to use the com unit.
It was just as well.
Reyes had already given her a lot more to think about than Claudia could process just then. She got up and moved away. “They letting you out today?” she asked from the door.
Reyes shrugged. “Ask her.”
The nurse pretended she hadn’t been listening. “What?”
Reyes all but rolled his eyes. “They releasing me today?”
“You’ll have to ask the doctor when he makes his rounds.”
“I’d say that was a definite no,” Reyes said dryly. “If they were going to let me out everybody on the floor would know.”
Claudia glanced at the nurse. “It should be soon, though, right? They’re releasing Wilkes today.”
“That lucky bastard!” Reyes exclaimed.
Claudia laughed. “You just think so! We had better chow on the Lander. But when they put you out you can come to my postage stamp quarters and I’ll throw something together that will stick to your ribs.”
“I’m gonna take you up on that,” Reyes said with a laugh.
She left then, but she arrived at her quarters with hardly any memory of finding her way there. Thankfully, her ‘auto-pilot’ was pretty good and had kept her from harm’s way and carried her directly to her temporary quarters.
He might be alive, she thought, torn between euphoria and despair, fear and uncertainty.
Would he want to see her now that it seemed it might be possible?
Would he care that she was carrying his baby?
Be happy about it?
Or be outraged and disgusted?
Did she want to know badly enough to risk discovering that he’d only used her to try to save his people?
She would have willingly helped if she’d known. He didn’t have to trick her.
But in a very real sense he had tricked her, used her, and she’d had to come to terms with the possibility that maybe he was done with her now that she’d served her purpose.
He’d come when she’d lay dying in the Lander, she reminded herself. She’d thought she dreamed it, but nothing else explained how she’d survived. Well, maybe that didn’t explain it, but she thought it was probable that he’d helped her—somehow. He’d given her the strength to survive.
She knew he had, that it wasn’t just her imagination.
He’d said he would see to it that she got home and then, magically, they’d rendezvoused with the rescue party.
He had done that!
She’d thought that she really was hallucinating because of slow brain death, oxygen depletion, dehydration.
But it wasn’t just ‘a miracle’ that she was the only one of the three of them that was in notably better condition than the other two.
Everyone had suspected, as Wilkes had ‘joked’, that she’d managed to steal from the others to insure her survival. They hadn’t found evidence that she had or she would’ve been charged, but they hadn’t tried to hide that they were suspicious.
Surely, if he’d gone to such lengths to insure her survival it meant that she mattered to him? That she wasn’t just a tool he’d used and then discarded?
She wasn’t as convinced as she wanted to be and it began to look as if she was going to be left to wonder and drive herself crazy.
Weeks passed and then it was announced to the general population that the Rogue planet had been captured in orbit between Earth and Mars and that there were signs of life on the planet or at least that there had been life.
That scared Claudia, but she could see that they were working at feeding the public small nibbles to prevent full scale panic.
The announcement still sent a flutter of panic through the colonists and almost brought work to a complete halt. Everyone was too busy making up news, repeating what they’d heard from this or that source, and speculating on what the aliens might be like if they were actually intelligent to focus on anything else.
A few weeks later it was announced that contact had been made. The rogue was called Vishnu by its occupants.
That sent a tsunami of a shockwave through the populace, but not all of the reactions were negative.
Just most of them.
Enough to make Claudia uneasily aware that she was surrounded by people who weren’t really anxious to welcome aliens among them.
And she was carrying an alien baby.
This is when she also realized that Reyes was right. There had been people at the medical center who knew she was pregnant and knew, moreover, that it was only half human. The fact that it hadn’t gotten out when so many people knew of it could only mean that they were under strict orders to keep quiet.
She was grateful for that secrecy at the moment and very uneasy about her and the baby’s reception once it became known.
She was also vastly uneasy as to what sort of plans the military/government might be concocting that involved her.
Chapter Fourteen
The new planet had moved so far down orbit by the time the politicians managed to hammer out an agreement amongst themselves that it was thought that it would probably be too late to try for a meeting that year, that they’d have to wait until the planets were closer to alignment because of the time it t
ook to travel from one to another.
They weren’t especially happy when they contacted the Vishnuvians and discovered it wasn’t an issue for them. They were ready to meet for talks.
Eager, in fact.
Their king would be coming himself rather than sending an envoy as everyone had expected.
This put the representatives from Earth at a disadvantage.
They didn’t want to admit that travel time was an issue for them, but the trip to Mars still took upwards of two months and they would have to drag the President and his cabinet out of their bunker before they could even launch them. This necessitated a new, week long discussion regarding how to handle a meeting they couldn’t get to without admitting that we didn’t have the technology the people of Vishnu had.
They decided to play for time.
They arranged to have the meeting on the Moon—or they told the people of Vishnu that that was the plan.
The President was unhappily convinced that it would not do to send the Vice President to handle the talks, that the King, or his people, might take it as an insult if he was willing to present himself and was met with the second in command, or worse, leaders of smaller, less important nations. So he was packed off to Mars on the first available, fastest, transport.
That happened to be a supply ship making a round trip run with supplies and equipment for Mars to pick up goods and raw materials to carry back to Earth—something rather like a land based tractor trailer or maybe a freight train—a vehicle for long hauls not especially comfortable and certainly not equal to the President’s dignity under ordinary circumstances. They spun it, later, as a ‘secret’ mission to throw off the Vishnuvians if they had nefarious plans to intercept and kill or capture the most powerful leader in the solar system.
The final impediment was a place that could be used for such a historical event when Mars had to be the location and Mars still, for the most part, had the look of the raw, wild outpost it was.
The structure had to be impressive. They needed a subtle show of power and it had to be a place that could be made as secure as human manpower and technology could make it. It had to be a place of tasteful elegance and wealth to show the ‘invaders’ that humans had the upper hand in this negotiation.
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