by Aline Ash
“Area is secured, krit,” the captain states.
“Have you located the detonator?” I ask.
“Here, krit,” another soldier says, bringing the tiny black box to me from where it had been hidden. I hold it in my hand and take in the scene of destruction. I turn to B’ecky, and her expression is grim; her eyes filled with a tableau of death.
“Let’s get back to the ship,” I order.
“Wait.” I turn and look. B’ecky hasn’t moved. She turns around and fixes me with the hardest stare I’ve ever seen from her – which is saying a lot. “Make them evacuate.”
“What?”
“Evacuate the base,” she says even more sternly. “There’s no sense in killing more people. It has to stop. Just... Somehow... Evacuate the base. Get everyone out before you destroy it. I just... I can’t stand knowing that so many people are dying on my account.”
I open my mouth to refuse her, but I know it would be futile. I look around and find a communications array. On it is a ship-wide alert panel. I punch a few commands in, and moments later, the lights go red and a siren wails, followed by a mechanized Raxian voice ordering everyone to evacuate and move to a safe distance immediately.
“That will have cut our escape time in half, mobilizing the rest of the base like that,” I state bluntly. “Let’s move!”
Our full force sprints through the base back toward the hangar. There’s no resistance on the way, so we make it there in no time at all, pile onto our ship, which L’efyen has kept running and ready, and take off before anyone can stop us. A few anti-aircraft turrets have caught on to what’s happening and the fools, staying at their posts despite the blaring alarm urging them to evacuate, fire at us. Fortunately, L’efyen is too swift a pilot to take any fire. We’re at a safe distance and out of their range moments later.
I turn to B’ecky. “That’s the best I can do,” I say. “I hope it got them out.”
“Me too,” she says sadly. “Do it.”
Not hesitating another moment, I slam my thumb down onto the detonator button and watch out of the back window as the base we’d just escaped becomes first nothing but a bright white light, then a furious, smoldering plume of smoke and fire, and finally, a shockwave of turbulence and sound.
We leave atmo and fire off into space as the only facility at which Kerx’s precious new weapon can be manufactured goes up in flames.
Chapter 22
S’oraj
As the explosion fades into nothingness and the planet recedes in our wake, I turn to my krens and raise a cheer in celebration. We slap each other on the back and holler out our victory cries for a moment before my attention settles on B’ecky. For all she’s been through, her nerve never once broke. She’s standing there, only as winded as the physical exertion of the escape made her, completely calm and collected. If there ever was to be a S’ulin Kara for me, she would have to be the one.
I reach out to take her in my arms, but she doubles over, clutching her belly with a cry of pain. The hold goes silent as we gather around. I rush to her side, catching her head in my hands before it bounces off the metal floor.
“B’ecky! B’ecky, what’s the matter? Are you hit?”
“No,” she cries through clenched teeth. “I don’t know. What the hell?”
One of my krens, S’landrian, scurries down beside us. A solid soldier, he also spent several cycles training as a healer. He’s not a master, but he’s a whiz at field dressings and emergencies. He presses on her abdomen, examining her responses.
“My med kit. There.”
One of the others throws the red bag toward him. He catches it and in a whirl has it open and is tapping into B’ecky’s vein to extract some blood for a quick test. In moments, he has a result.
“Your Majesty, a word with you and your shan in private, please.”
I shoo the rest away so the three of us can confer where B’ecky lies. S’landrian continues. “There’s no easy way to say this so I’ll get right to the point, shan... You’re pregnant.”
The words echo like an explosion in a canyon, bouncing off the walls of my ears for what feels like the rest of time itself. In an instant, I’m flooded with so many overwhelming and conflicting feelings that I cannot get a grasp on any one or another to make sense of anything. My ears ring as though my hearing has gone out and S’landiran’s words feel eons away. I have to shake my head to snap out of it and hear what he’s saying.
“—could lead to a miscarriage.”
“Say that again,” I order. My head is swimming so desperately I missed almost everything he said.
“Your Majesty, are you alright?”
“Just say all that again. Now!”
“Right. As I say: she’s early stages, but between the stress of the abduction, the imprisonment, and the extraction, and the obviously inherent lack of proper nutrition in these early taks, all that is a recipe for a miscarriage. If she doesn’t receive healing immediately, she will lose the young one.”
B’ecky’s eyes catch mine and I’m at a complete loss for words. I simply gather her up into my arms and hold her. The shock of this is clearly stunning her on top of the bone crushing pain she’s clearly feeling and it’s causing her to go uncharacteristically quiet. For all the times I’ve wished that she’d stop arguing with everything I say and just listen, I repent. I’d argue for the rest of time if it meant she’d just say something right now.
“B’ecky. B’ecky, listen to me.” I lean in close and look her in the eyes. “I’m going to get you back to Orean and get you to the infirmary. You’re going to be fine and we are going to save this young one. Do you hear me?”
“S’oraj, there’s not enough time,” she grunts. She has to take a moment to breathe through a wave of pain, but then she presses on. “Even if we got all the way back to Orean soon enough, there’s no telling what the state of Oraj will be. If Kerx gets there and X’oran can’t stop him, there might not be an infirmary. Or a city at all. Kerx thinks you’re at the palace; he’ll attack as soon as he’s in range. We can’t take the time to go all the way back, and we can’t take the risk of you being killed in that attack if it’s not stopped.
“You’ve got to get me to an outpost. Somewhere nearby with good medical facilities. That’s the only choice. Just... do it fast. I don’t know how much longer I can take this.”
She grimaces and curls over her belly again in writhing agony, and I feel like a lost little young one unsure of everything in the universe.
As hard as we’ve tried, our technicians have yet to discover any way of dealing with this Raxian weapon head-on. Every test of a defensive measure has failed miserably, and even the attempts at replicating or matching the destructive force of the beam have been catastrophic disasters.
And while our outposts are highly advanced and have some of the best medical technology that exists anywhere in the galaxy, we’ve already seen – twice – that these hybrid young ones require exponentially more care than a typical Orean pregnancy. No matter where I take her, they won’t be fully equipped to help. They can put a dressing on the wound, but that doesn’t mean it’s healed.
“B’ecky, an outpost won’t have what’s needed to take care of you. And as for the weapon, there’s—”
“You’ll just have to figure it out, S’oraj,” she growls, throwing her head back in pain. “Think! What do you know about the weapon? What have you learned?”
I rack my brain and stammer through all our failures, concluding with the one last outlying but impossible theory that my teams have come up with. “One of our technicians did create a code that could be input directly into the weapon’s firing system to disrupt it at its source, but there’s no way that we could get someone onto Kerx’s ship without them being detected. And even if we did, there’s no telling whether the code would actually work. It was entirely theoretical and obviously couldn’t be tested in practice. So... Nothing. We know nothing.”
“Does Fiari know about the code?”
“And does he know what the code is?”
“Yes, of course, he helped develop it.”
“Then we’d better hope he has a chance to try it out.”
Oh, Sons of Oraj. “Do you really believe that he would?”
She grits her teeth, then catches her breath. “It doesn’t matter if I believe it or not. He’s our only shot. He’s on that ship and he’s helped us so far. If he knows the code, we’d better hope he uses it if he gets the chance. But in the meantime, you’ve got to get me to an outpost and get yourself back to your fleet. I need medical attention right now, and your men need their king.”
I can’t believe that this is where we’ve gotten to, but she’s right. Fiari really is our only hope. And she’s absolutely right on the other counts as well. X’oran and V’orin are great strategists and executors of command, but they aren’t the king. If Kerx is coming with an all-out, war-ending attack, I need to be at the head of our line of defense. And she needs healing more urgently than a flight all the way back to Orean will take.
Whether I like it or not, once again, her plan is the only logical option.
“I guess it’s time we find out exactly how loyal our new ally really is.”
Chapter 23
Becky
I’m doing my best to stay awake, but the pain is so intense that I keep slipping in and out of consciousness. I finally really come to as I’m being wheeled out of the ship and down the hallways of some outpost on the edge of Orean space, likely toward whatever infirmary they have. There’s already an IV drip going into my arm that I don’t remember anyone putting into me, but the pain has subsided a bit and my senses are coming back around better than I remember since I first collapsed on the floor after we got away from Rax.
“B’ecky, can you hear me?” S’oraj is next to me, jogging along beside the gurney. His face is a mask of concern and fear.
“S’oraj, what are you doing? You need to get to your army.”
“I will, but I have to know that you’re okay first. I can’t just leave you and go.”
We round a final corner and the doctors move me to a more stable bed. They hurry around me like ants on an anthill while S’oraj takes my hand in his and squeezes.
“I don’t want to leave you—”
“You don’t have a choice,” I remind him as firmly as I can. Whatever drugs they’re giving me are taking the edge off the pain, for which I’m grateful, but they’re also making me start to feel a little fuzzy. Keep it together, Becky. You’ve got to be strong right now. For yourself, for this baby – apparently – and for S’oraj.
“Listen to me, S’oraj.” I have to stop and collect myself. I can feel tears welling in my eyes and my throat clenching around the words I know I have to say. Why am I getting like this? I don’t cry! What the hell? “Listen: your men need you to lead them against this enemy. You won’t get another chance to strike back like this. Kerx is betting all his chips on this one move; you have to beat him. You have to stop his attack, no matter the cost. Your entire planet is counting on you. The safety of the universe is in your hands.
“If Kerx wins this fight, it’s all over. He’ll turn that weapon around on the Intergalactic Council and hold them hostage while Rax rapes and enslaves its way through world after world. You can’t let him get away with that. You have a man on the inside; you just have to trust that he’ll do whatever he can to stop the weapon from firing.
“But if he fails – if Fiari can’t do it or gets caught or killed – you have to be ready to fight through Rax’s fleet. You are the only one who can lead your army through this fight. I promise... I will be just fine right here. I trust your healers here to take care of me, so you need to do the same. Trust them. Trust me. Trust Fiari. And go finish this fight.”
My lip is quivering by the end of my little speech and I can’t hold back the tears any longer. The last thing in the world I want is for him to leave my side while I fight for this baby’s life inside me in this strange place surrounded by people who look nothing like me, but that’s the hand I’ve been dealt; I need to suck it up and work with what I’ve got. And if that means swallowing my anguish in this moment so he sees me filled with strength, then so be it. I wipe the tears from my face and give him the strongest smile I can muster.
“B’ecky, I swear to you,” he says, “I will return. I will win this fight and I will come back for you no matter what.”
“I know you will,” I say, biting back a sob that’s been trying to escape this entire time. “But you have a planet to save. You have to go.”
He stands and turns, looking at the door that will take him away from me and toward what could be his final hours. He looks back to me, kneels beside me, kisses me gently and whispers, “I love you.”
And that does it. I can no longer hold back the flood of tears behind the dam of willfulness I’d built. I sob and blubber as the salty drops trickle down my cheeks. I fling my arms around his neck and hold him tightly for what could very well be the last time.
“I love you, too.”
I cry in his arms, memorizing his smell, the feeling of his cheek against mine, the way his shoulders tense and relax at my touch. I try to savor every single second that we have together before I disengage and gently push him away.
“You have to go,” I say through tear-blurred vision. “You have to. Go on. I promise, I’ll be fine. I’ll see you when this is all over... I love you.”
“I love you,” he says. He kisses me one last time, then turns and vanishes down the corridor before either of us can prolong the pain any further. The healers once again surround me in an instant and begin poking and prodding me to test my blood and inject me with vital medicine to stabilize me and the baby.
The pain in my stomach is coming back and is threatening to be even stronger than before, but this time it’s augmented by the pain in my heart as S’oraj gets farther and farther away from me. And not just the emotional, longing kind of pain; it physically aches.
The bond we share is so intense, I can almost feel every step he takes back toward the shuttle. I can almost hear the thrusters as it takes off toward the Orean fleet. I can almost sense the pull through my skin as he vanishes into the blackness of space and I’m left in this bed wondering if he’ll ever come back.
And I’m left wondering what the hell is going to happen from here. What will happen to this planet I’ve grown so fond of? What will happen to this man who I resisted for so long, but have unwittingly and despite myself come to love? What will happen to me?
And what about this baby?
I still haven’t even had time to process the fact that I’m apparently pregnant and all the insanity that’s about to come from that revelation when one of the healers comes over with a small vial of some kind of clear liquid.
“Hello, Your Majesty, my name is Healer T’maku. I’m going to administer a little sedative that should help you sleep while we take care of you and this young one, okay?”
I open my mouth to reject the title and the sedative — I don’t want you knocking me out and doing a bunch of tests on me, you fucking stranger! — but then the thought occurs to me: if S’oraj has started calling me his ‘queen,’ then it only makes sense that he probably instructed the healers here to treat me with the same respect and call me by that title. It’s a bit presumptuous of him, but then again, I did tell him that I liked it when he called me that.
And, if the stress that I’ve been under is what’s causing this miscarriage, then adding more stress to the equation is the worst possible thing I could do. And lying here worrying and fretting about whether I can still sense S’oraj’s life somewhere out there in the violent void of space is not going to do anything to help. I need to calm down. I need to get my heart rate down and reduce my stress. And if a sedative is on the table, maybe it’s not the worst idea in the world.
“You know what?” I say. “Give me enough to knock my ass ou
t until next week. If I’m about to become a single mother, I’d rather not be conscious when it happens.”
The healer smiles sadly and administers the drugs. She steps away to make some notes and, as I wait for the stuff to take effect, I try to think about anything positive I can. We did destroy the main Raxian military base. No matter what, that’ll slow them down for a while. Even if they do destroy Orean and S’oraj along with it...
I shake my head and try to refocus on something good again. And I’m pregnant! That should be cause for celebration, not sadness. Even if S’oraj is killed and I wind up having to raise this hybrid baby on my own on some strange planet and I never see my mother or sister again.
Dammit! My head is getting woozier every second, but I’m determined to find something good to focus on before I pass out. The last thing I need is some panicked stress dreams to be controlling my subconscious while I’m drugged into a sleepy stupor.
He loves me.
And there it is. I can feel the tightness in my chest release, and I hope for a moment that he’s thinking the same thing at the same moment and feeling the same relief that I am.
He loves me.
His words echo in my ears and I listen to them ring out in peal after peal of joyful harmony. If you’d asked me a year ago if I’d be mooning over some man who said he loves me like this, I’d have been more likely to slap the drink out of your hand than tell you that you were right, but life has a funny way of turning everything on its head.
As my awareness slips away and I fall into unconsciousness, I keep actively listening to the memory of his voice saying those three simple words, and they give me hope beyond what I would have believed I could feel, given the situation.
But his love will keep him alive. His love will bring him back to me. His love will reunite us one way or another. Somehow, I just know it. The two of us will be okay. No... The three of us.
