sidebar image
Chapter 7 Chapter 9

Alternity - Chapter 8

Special Delivery

Time: CY 10089 - AD April 5166
Location: Sinti spaceport

"Harper, are you sure you and Trance can handle this by yourselves?"

"What's to handle, Boss?" replied Harper. "It's nothing more than a simple cargo haul to Albuquerque Drift. We drop the cargo off, get paid, try to pick up a cargo bound for Sinti, and head back for home."

"Well, I could reschedule my meeting with Tri Galaxy Shipping and come with you."

"I think we can handle this by ourselves, Mother."

After five years of working with Harper, Beka knew that when he called her Mother she had pushed a little too far, and to be truthful it was nothing more than a simple cargo delivery. Harper and Trance had done a number of such runs by themselves over the past few years. She really didn't want to reschedule the meting with Tri Galaxy either. They were offering a six-month contract. Between that and their contract with the Wayists they would have enough of an income that she wouldn't be forced to have to choose between food or repair parts.

"Ok kids, take care of the Maru. I'll handle things here."

The trip to Albuquerque Drift had been a milk run. The cargo was delivered and payment received. Trance even managed to find a customer who needed some items delivered to Sinti and couldn't wait for the next scheduled courier ship, so the Maru wasn't heading back to Sinti with an empty cargo hold. All in all Harper was feeling pleased with himself as he headed back for home. That is, until he dropped the Maru out of slipstream.

"Damn!" Harper swore vehemently as he checked the navigation instruments.

"Harper, is something wrong?" Trance called from the environmental control station. "Did we exit the slipstream in the wrong place?"

"Nothing that serious, my purple princess. But it's going to take a bit longer than anticipated for us to make it back to Beka. We exited the stream in the outer regions of the systems Kuiper belt. At 20 percent speed light speed it'll take us over a day to make it the rest of the way home."

"That's not too bad. And it will give us a little more time alone together." Trance could find the good side of any situation.

"That it will, my sparkly purple pixie. Why don't you go back to the crew's compartment and take a little nap. I'm going to tight beam Sinti control and leave a message for Beka letting her know the situation. Then I'll come back and join you, and we'll see what comes up" Thee was a suggestion of a leer in his voice as he spoke the last phrase.

Harper sent the message and then leaned back in the pilot's chair. He was going to give Trance a few more minutes to settle down before he joined her. As he was sitting his eyes grew heavy and he fell asleep.

"Harper, it's time." Harper awoke with a start to see Trance standing beside the pilot's chair, bent over slightly and obviously in some discomfort. Her hands were over her abdomen.

"Are you sure? We're still over a day out from Sinti" This was Harper's worst nightmare, having to help Trance give birth while they were alone in space.

"Pretty sure. The contractions are coming about fifteen minutes apart." She gave her husband a cheerful smile. "Our baby is going to be a true child of the Maru, born in deep space."

Harper got up, and then had to lean up against a bulkhead to steady himself. They had discussed the possibility of this happening; it was just that now that it was happening it was hard to remember what they had discussed.

"Ok honey. You set up the bed in the common room. I'll get plastic sheeting, clean sheets and blankets, some towels and a pair of scissors."

He returned with the bedding and covered the table, now converted into a birthing bed, with the plastic sheeting, and covered the plastic with the sheets. He rolled up the blankets thinking Trance might want to use them as back supports later. The towels and scissors were placed aside; they would be needed when the baby arrived.

"Let's take a walk to the engine room, Harper. I don't feel like lying down right now."

They made several circuits of the length of the ship, from command deck to the engineering spaces and back again. Twice during their tours Trance had a contraction and had to clutch her husband for support. Both times, Harper's heart wanted to stop beating. His wife was in pain and there was nothing he could do about it. He was afraid to give her any of the painkilling medicines from the Maru's first aid kit. Trance's physiology was sufficiently alien that drugs often did not affect her the same way that they did humans and he had absolutely no idea what they would do to their child. Soon he was sweating as badly as Trance was.

"Let's go back to the common room, Harper. I need to lie down for a bit."

When they arrived back in the common room, Trance immediately climbed onto the table, the rolled over onto her side and gave a sigh of relief. Harper was at her side immediately.

"It's all right, Harper," she said wanting to reassure him before he panicked, thinking something was going wrong with the labor. " I'll be fine. Women have been having babies for millions of years now. We have the process pretty well mastered. I just need you to be here with me."

Four hours later, Harper wasn't so sure about the last statement. The contractions were coming about every two minutes now and Trance was in a fair bit of pain. He had never heard Trance swear before, and sometimes wondered if she even knew how. He now had the answer to that question. Trance's command of invective was truly impressive. She was swearing at him fluently in three languages that he recognized and several others that he didn't. Twice she had ordered him out of the common room and then immediately asked him to come back. Abruptly she stopped the cursing and gave him a tired smile.

"It won't be long now."

An hour later the baby's head was starting to show.

"Just a couple more pushes, honey," Harper said encouragingly. "You're doing great. We're almost done." He could tell that Trance was getting tired. The time between the contractions had increased and she was starting to doze in the intervals between them.

Trance grunted as another contraction passed through her. Even more of the baby's head started to show.

"Good job, honey. I can see the head. Take a deep breath and push."

Two more contractions and the baby's head was clear. Harper reached for one of the towels he had laid aside for this moment. He knew once the head was clear the rest of the child would follow quickly. He was correct; five minutes later he was holding his newborn.

The baby was purple, wrinkled like a prune, bald headed, and equipped with a skinny tail that drooped like an over cooked noodle. And was the most beautiful thing that Harper had ever seen. She also had a well-developed set of lungs, a fact which she promptly demonstrated as she voiced her discontent about being thrust into the world.

"We have a daughter," said Harper reverently.

He quickly tied off and cut the umbilical cord, then wrapped his newborn in one of the towels and handed her to Trance. Her smile was tired but it was enough to make him feel as though the sun was rising in the compartment.

"What are we going to name her?" he asked. They had never settled on a name

Trance replied with a sound that seemed to consist of nothing but hard consonants and vowels. "In my tongue it means 'She who sheds light upon the world.'"

"It's a pretty name, sweetheart, but it's going to be kind of hard for people to pronounce. Maybe we should give her a second name, one that most folks can pronounce. How about we also call her Aurora? It means dawn in one of the old languages of my planet."

"I like that too. It's pretty, and a new dawn is always so beautiful."

She fell asleep as she was speaking the last words, the baby cradled to her breast. Harper sat down on the deck, bracing his back against a bulkhead. It would have been more comfortable in the pilot's chair on the command deck but he didn't want to leave his family. A minute later he joined his wife in slumber, to be awakened when the proximity alarm in the command deck went off, warning him that the Maru was nearing Sinti.

"Well, Harper, late as usual," said Beka. "How did the trip go?" She and Harper were on the command deck discussing the trip to Albuquerque Drift.

"Piece of cake, Boss. We even picked up some cargo so we didn't come back empty."

"That's good to hear. Where's Trance?"

"She's sleeping in the crew's quarters. The trip kind of tired her out."

"Were there any problems on the trip?"

"Nothing we couldn't handle."

At that moment Aurora Gemini Harper awoke and proceeded, at the top of her lungs, to let the world know that she was hungry.

Chapter 7 Chapter 9