Alien Fighter's Baby (Captured Science Fiction Romance) (13 page)

S
tarling woke
before it was light, because she’d heard Bran and Cobalt moving around outside the bio-h.

“The quicker they go, the quicker they’ll be back,” she whispered.

It was because of her that they were going up the mountain to do it from the top down, instead of climbing the rock face. Even Cobalt had been hard to put off on that point. He’d kept saying he could climb it faster, but neither she nor Bran had wanted to air their earlier arguments about it or about what had happened when Bran had tried it.

She rose and slipped on her tee shirt. It was about the only thing she could wear with her belly so round. It was a good thing she was nearly done stitching an attempt at another shirt with material from the sidewalls of the Zach. That would round out her clothing choices. She had two skirts, one was hide, and she pulled that on. She hadn’t worn it since that first day Cobalt had shown up, but she felt better about him. Lately, she hadn’t felt him watching her.

Maybe he’d finally gotten the idea.

She had noticed the night before that he’d called Bran her boyfriend, and she hadn’t corrected him. Neither had Bran. Surely Bran had noticed. He noticed everything. What she wouldn’t give to kiss him goodbye that morning and feel his arms around her.

She had woken the afternoon before with Bran sitting next to her, and he had looked intensely conflicted. So much so, she’d been urged to comfort him. Then he’d said the most wonderful thing.

“I only want to keep you both safe.”

She clutched her hand against her heart just thinking about it, because she couldn’t ask more from him. It was so close to a declaration of love. That night as she’d lain on the airbed, she decided that she would tell Bran she loved him. She had debated it for a long time, but she wanted him to know.

She needed him to know before the baby came. Just in case anything happened to her during the birth. How tragic would it be if she died and she’d never told Bran that she really loved him? She was trying not to be selfish, because she knew that he thought he couldn’t stay with her. But even in that case, she wanted him to know.

So she would tell him, and soon…

“Starling? Can you wake up and come out here. I need to give you the hover-mic,” Bran said, from beyond the bio-h flap door.

“I’m awake, Bran. I’ll be right out.”

After Bran gave her the mic, which she put near her ear, where it took its place to hover, she looked at both of them in the dim dawn light.

“Be careful.” She said it to both of them, and she meant it.

Cobalt winked at her, while Bran looked at her for a long moment. She knew he was trying to convey without words that he wished he were kissing her instead. She nodded to him.

“Remember,” he said, “if you need anything, you yell in that mic. No matter how small. If you don’t like the looks of it, you call us back.”

“I will,” she promised, then she watched their broad backs as they walked out of the cavern. After she couldn’t see them for a few minutes, she finally turned and went to make a mug of bio-tea to drink while she waited.

About thirty minutes later, she’d been listening to their banter over the mic when she felt her first pain. Immediately, she clutched her belly.

“Oh no. Not now,” she whispered as she stood, suspended, waiting to feel anything else.

In her ear, she heard, “You hold the rope, boss man. I’ll go down the side.”

Cobalt was going to climb down to set the camo-stake, and that meant Bran would be holding and guiding the rope. She liked it that way, because she didn’t completely trust Cobalt.

The cramp in her belly eased, as she heard Bran saying, “I’ll give you two stakes in case one falls. But if you get a chance, set them both.”

Should she tell Bran about the cramp? It seemed as if it was gone.

She heard Cobalt’s answer: “Right, boss man. It’s quite a view up here.”

Starling decided to wait and see if there was another one as she sat down.

“Good view of the entire valley,” Bran said.

Starling patted her belly as she listened. “Give me more line, boss man,” Cobalt said.

“You’ve got twenty meters. That’s further than I thought,” Bran said.

“It’s even further than that,” Cobalt said, and it sounded as if he was straining. Then she heard Cobalt barely muttering, “What’s that sound?”

“What sound?” she whispered, just as Bran asked the same thing.

Then she heard Bran shout, “Damn it!”

Starling stood and began to pace, while she barely noticed another small cramp. There were no sounds in the valley. Unless—

“Grab hold, Cobalt! I’m throwing the rope down. We have incoming!” Bran shouted.

“Oh no,” Starling cried. That meant Grubs!

“I’ve got the rope. I’m climbing up,” Cobalt snapped.

“No! Evade!” Bran shouted.

“Oh Jupiter, Jupiter,” Starling cried, trying not to shake. But then she reminded herself that Bran was a super trained soldier.

The next things she heard were garbled, as if the mic was turning off and on and she was getting only bits and pieces. It sounded like shouts, it sounded like shots, and even inside the cavern she heard the rumble of a Grub ship overhead.

It took everything she had to keep herself together, but she had to do it for Bran and their baby. She wanted to ask over the mic what was going on, but she knew it was better for them to stay out of their way. So all she could do was pace, until she finally noticed another light cramp.

She looked down at her large, rounded belly. “How long? Have you been doing this all this time?” She pressed her temple. “I can’t now. Not now.”

She was about to lose her cool when she heard Cobalt’s harried voice. “Starling, I’m incoming. Don’t shoot me. I’ve got no enemy on my heels.”

“What do you mean?” she yelled into the mic.

Then she realized that she’d forgotten to turn it on so he could hear. Before she could take a breath to yell at him again, a thick rope dropped down from the top of the cavern entrance. Its coiled end hit the bottom of the cavern, raising dust, and the next second there was a zipping sound, and a man came gliding down the rope.

Starling rushed over to the rope, just as Cobalt’s feet hit the ground.

“Where’s Bran?” she cried.

Cobalt looked at her grimly with intensely lit blue eyes as he unhooked himself from the zip line. Then he tersely said, “Bran’s leading them away.”

“What?” she cried, and she grabbed the front of his torn uniform vest and tugged on it hard. “What do you mean? He can’t do that!”

“Grubs came up on us out of nowhere. Boss man tossed the rope down so they wouldn’t know I was there. But they saw him. He took off,” Cobalt snapped.

Starling let go of Cobalt and frantically tried to key on her mic. “Bran!” she cried. “Bran!”

“He can’t hear you, Star,” Cobalt shouted. Then he held up his fist and opened his fingers, palm up. She looked down, horrified, to see Bran’s mic in his palm.

“No!”

But as she frantically turned to the Zach with the intention of getting in it to go find Bran and support him, Cobalt grabbed her.

“No, you are not going out there,” he growled.

He’d grabbed her from behind, high and low with her round belly between, as she struggled against his hold. She panted as she tried to get away from him.

“We have to go support him. He needs us!” she cried.

Cobalt hauled her back, lifting her off her feet to do it, with his voice harsh in her ear. “It’s not the way it’s done, Star.”

Starling tried to draw blood with her nails on his forearms holding her prisoner as she struggled against him. “I need Bran,” she cried. “I need him.”

“He’ll get away,” Cobalt growled, but she didn’t really hear him.

No matter what she yelled at Cobalt or what she tried, he held her until she fell exhausted against him. When she did that, he set her on an atomic cooler they used as a seat and crouched in front of her, looking up at the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“You need to listen to me—” he started.

But she yelled over him, clutching her belly as she cried, “You can’t have me ever! This isn’t the way!”

That caused Cobalt to cuss several phrases that made her clutch her ears. Then he got up and stalked toward the entrance. But he stayed in between her and the entrance of the cavern and the Zach, so she couldn’t get past him to get to either of them.

Because of her, Bran was going to die at the hands of the enemy, since Cobalt had decided it was a way to have her, while getting Bran out of the picture. She tried to stop her tears through another cramp. It was too early for the baby to arrive. It had to be false labor, which she’d read about. The med-pack AI might be able to tell her, but she couldn’t waste that time. Bran was out there and the Zach might save him.

Just then, as she’d thought of the med-pack, an idea came to her. It had injections to put a person to sleep for surgeries. If she could get a hold of one, then inject Cobalt…

“I still hear the Grub ship overhead. It’s moving off, but not far,” Cobalt said with his back to her. “Luckily, I got the camo-stakes engaged, so the entrance is masked.”

Starling wanted to throw up and yell at him at the same time. How could he worry about that when Bran’s life was in danger? It just showed he had ulterior motives.

“I need the med-pack. The baby is coming.”

Cobalt whipped toward her, looking surprised, then very concerned. It was a lie; he wasn’t concerned, she thought.

“Labor pains?” he asked sharply, and she was surprised he even knew about them.

She sniffled back her tears, nodding. He stalked her way and she wanted to back up, but held her seat when he crouched in front of her. When he reached a hand forward, she grabbed his wrist to stop him.

“What are you doing?” she asked, on high notes.

“Feeling the cramps,” he muttered as he pushed. She had no hope to stop him. His huge, warm hand spread out across her belly over her tee shirt, while she prayed he could feel a cramp. “Didn’t know he meant this much to you.”

Starling didn’t answer as a small cramp rippled through her. But when she watched Cobalt’s hard features, she knew he hadn’t felt it. It was too small.

“We need to save him, Cobalt. He would save you,” she whispered.

He looked away from her and to the side, with his hand still branding her.

“It was a lie about the labor pains.” Starling bit her lip, not answering, then his hand lifted. “I know you think I’m trying to let him get killed. But we are trained for this, Star, and one thing we do not do is go barreling in to also get caught.”

She tried to believe him. It was all she had. When he looked at her, his eyes were filled with some kind of hard emotion.

“Bran would gut me alive if I let you get caught. Believe it or not, this is exactly what he wants me to do.”

B
ran was frozen
in a Grub flat-backed paralyzing stretcher. The only thing moving on him was the blood seeping out of a wound he’d taken to his shoulder. He’d been in one of the damn immobile stretchers before, when they captured him the first time. He wasn’t sure how it worked, but he was paralyzed on his back.

The stretcher sat in a partial clearing with a wrecked Grub ship not far off. At least he’d brought down the ship, and the way the lone Grub was acting, he might have knocked out its ability to communicate with its base.

He’d never prayed before, but he was praying that he had busted its communication before it had time to relay that he’d been seen and given the coordinates of where. He’d never forgive himself if he led the damn Grubs anywhere near Starling.

The Grub waddle-stomped over to him. It had a flat device with a screen similar to a tablet in its curled fist. There was a picture on the screen of a woman with long black hair. But it flicked off before Bran could really see it, then the screen showed a picture of Starling.

The Grub stood over him jerking the tablet, as it screeched, “Where! Where!”

Yeah, right, he was going to give that up … never. Bran glared at the Grub. He knew his mouth worked when nothing else did, but the filthy alien would pay hell getting anything out of him. The stupid insectoid was so worked up that its slimy sweat flung across his immobile torso, and Bran was disgusted that he couldn’t fling it off him. Talk about torture.

But the Grub seemed overly agitated, and Bran figured—he hoped—that meant the insectoid was as stranded as he was. Only after the stumpy excuse for a Grub marched back to its ruined ship, did Bran notice he could move his first finger on his right side.

“How in the hell,” he whispered.

Then he put everything aside and concentrated. Yeah, that finger was free, his bleeding shoulder could move, his left ankle, and suddenly his left hand came free. He didn’t spend any time trying to figure it out; he just acted, and that was to use the leverage he’d gained to fling himself and the stretcher facedown.

He’d hoped, and it had worked, that the device couldn’t hold him upside down, so he fell free. But the stretcher thudded on top of him, which took his breath for a few seconds, and made too much noise. The Grub heard it and swung its stocky body around.

Bran rolled from under the stretcher, grabbing the edges of it to heft it up in front of him, just as the Grub’s first shot hit.

The stretcher must have been made of some kind of tough alien alloy, because the first shot didn’t penetrate it. Bran didn’t waste time wondering if a second shot would knock a hole through it, as he rolled to a stand with the stretcher in front of him, and then charged the Grub.

* * *

S
tarling glared at Cobalt
. He’d only allowed a small light, and he looked ghostly in the darkness of the cavern, sitting across from her.

“How long do we wait before we go find him, Cobalt?” she asked sharply. They had been arguing all day, into the evening, and well into the night. She wanted to curl up and sleep for a week, but she couldn’t with Bran out there obviously captured again.

“Not how it’s done,” Cobalt muttered. He’d said that same thing dozens of times. She was pretty sure he’d resorted to only short answers with her before dark.

“He’s been captured. That big weapon in the Zach could help him,” she said. But she’d already tried being mean, sweet, pleading, and shouting at him. Nothing worked. Cobalt was a wall on the subject.

So she was a bit surprised when he shouted, “What are you going to do, being that pregnant? Either I leave you here alone or you bounce around in the Zach, getting in the middle of a firefight?”

Starling gulped with wide eyes as she looked at Cobalt. The light made his face have dark shadows, which in turn made him look more lethal. But she would not be intimidated by him, only—

“I’ll stay here with a weapon,” she whispered.

“And if the baby comes while I’m gone?” he asked, in a calmer voice, but it made her wince anyway.

“I can’t be the reason not to save him,” she said, then broke down and started crying.

“Hell, Star,” Cobalt said.

“I love him,” she sobbed. “Please.”

“Damn it,” Cobalt said, then he was beside her. She didn’t try to shake off the arm he put around her, because she was so upset. “Star, he’ll get free. I swear it.”

She fell into his shoulder. “You swear?” she asked as she sobbed.

“I swear,” he said. “This isn’t about how much I want you, because I’ve changed my mind on that. Totally.”

“You have?” she asked into his shoulder.

“You want him. I get it. I’m too rough. You two have a baby. How am I going to get in between that? And Star…”

He paused as she looked up at him and prompted, “Yes?”

“Star, you’re too damn complicated.”

Impossibly, Cobalt had made her smile. It was wobbly, but there for one second. “I’m glad I am,” she said.

Cobalt shook his head. “See, right there, that’s complicated.”

She nodded and used the end of her tee shirt to dry her eyes. “Bran likes it,” she told him. “We’re together, but he was cautious about what you’d do if you found out.”

“Figures,” Cobalt said. “I just didn’t want to see it.” He patted her back. “Better?” he asked.

She nodded. “But if we go slowly, can we go look for him in the morning?”

“Women,” Cobalt muttered, then nodded. “Slow and cautious. A little look-around, see if I can recon what happened and where.”

Starling was so relieved that she barely held back from hugging Cobalt. If she had hope, she could survive, until she found Bran again. After that, Cobalt made her lie down by saying they could not go try in the morning if she hadn’t rested.

Just the way he acted, not taking advantage of her, made her believe he really had gotten over his infatuation over her. If that were the case, then she had to believe what he was doing was because he believed it was the best thing to do. And that meant it had nothing to do with him wanting to keep her to himself.

She felt such relief at that, the tension she’d been carrying eased, and then she yawned. She hadn’t had a cramp since sometime in the afternoon, so she’d stopped worrying about them. But there was no way she’d ever go to sleep.

Then she was blinking, because she thought she’d heard something that she desperately needed to hear. But had she fallen asleep and just woken up? It was so dark.

“Starling?”

“Oh my God, Bran!” she cried.

Starling leaped off the airbed and right into Bran’s arms as he hovered over her in the dark.

“Bran, is it really you? Bran?”

“Yes, sweetheart, yes,” Bran said, and he sounded gruff. “I got away.”

She kissed his face in the dark and patted everything she could reach on him, subconsciously checking that he was okay. Then their lips finally met and she realized she was crying, as they desperately kissed each other.

“I owe Cobalt for keeping you here,” Bran said, between their kisses. She was shocked, but not enough to stop kissing him. When they finally broke their lips apart, he said, “I bet you were a pain in his ass, weren’t you? We never went over protocol for if I got captured.”

“Did you talk to him already?” she asked, stroking his back as she cuddled him.

“Nah, only a grunt as I passed him on my way in to you. I just know you.”

Starling wiped her tears on his chest as the feeling of what he’d said squeezed through her heart. It was true they knew each other that well.

“You’re safe,” she said, with a little sob.

“Just a shoulder wound,” he said.

“Bran,” she exclaimed. “We have to look at—”

“No time, sweetheart. We have to move the camp right now,” Bran said over her.

“But, but,” she sputtered, as he pulled her out of the bio-h. Then she stared in amazement when she saw the entire camp had been packed back into the Zach, except for the bio-h. “Cobalt did all this?” she asked.

But she didn’t get an answer, as both men hurried to drop the bio-h and pack it up. Once she was strapped into the back jump seat, which had been pulled down for her in the rear of the vehicle, she learned that Cobalt knew they would have to move.

When he and Bran talked about it up front, it sounded as if Cobalt was moving them with or without Bran. And Bran agreed with that!

Soldiers.

She’d never understand them. But Bran was alive, and that was all that mattered—except by that evening, she was having labor pains again.