Out of Bight, Out of Mind Read online

  That earned him a soul-lifting laugh. “I don’t think they’ll make you do that.” She looked at the guards and said something to them. They both nodded and smiled at Ford.

  Ford held out his hand first to Pabo, who eventually shook, and Gwan. Then Ford hugged them both.

  The Beyants awkwardly hugged him back while Emi looked on, smiling. Then Pabo said something that made her laugh.

  “What?” Ford asked.

  She stepped close again and he put his arm around her as they started walking. “He said they appreciate the gesture, but all you had to do was say thanks.”

  “Now they tell me.”

  * * * *

  The DSMC and ISNC wouldn’t intercede, said it was ISTC jurisdiction. The DSMC gave Aaron permission to follow the convoy to Mars and arranged for them to dock in the diplomatic hangar, but beyond that, there was nothing they could do other than be sympathetic.

  Graymard also issued Aaron strict orders not to attempt to contact the diplomatic party until after the treaty signing. After that, it didn’t matter.

  “This is total bullshit! It makes absolutely no sense!” he argued with Graymard over the com link.

  “It’s the law. Remember the Corsarican Massacre? Eighty years ago, a misunderstanding with a poor translation led to a huge battle and innocent lives lost. Now, until the treaties are signed, there is to be no communication beyond very strictly controlled and limited circumstances. It’s safer for everyone,” Graymard explained. “Their willingness to comply is seen as a sign of good faith. Our escorting them, unmolested, to the treaty signing is also seen as such.”

  Aaron thought it was bullshit, but he was helpless to do anything about it.

  He was also finally forced to admit the truth to Caph, about what the station security officer had told him regarding Emi’s chip. He worried Caph would get upset, but instead it seemed to relieve him.

  “I knew that was bullshit, Aar. Ford wouldn’t get so drunk he ended up on the wrong fucking ship. You know him better than that.”

  “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want you getting your hopes up.”

  Caph shook his head, quiet resignation on his face. “If he did it, he had a good reason. All I know is I want Ford back. We’ll deal with the rest of it later.”

  The Beyant ship was too far away and too well protected by defense shields for Aaron and Caph to scan it for any sign of Ford.

  Or Emi.

  Aaron tried to check his anger. Something else happening that was his fault. Had he been around the past several months and not dumped everything onto Ford while absorbed in his own grief, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Ford must have snapped. What other explanation was there?

  As the weeks ticked by and they drew closer to Mars, he focused on his work, on his ship, and on Caph. They really couldn’t spend much time together, other than overlapping watches on the bridge. He worried for the big guy, knowing he usually needed contact, needed the downtime to talk or relax with one of them.

  “Are you okay?” he asked him one day as Caph appeared on the bridge to take the night watch.

  “Yeah.” He looked at Aaron. “Please promise me you won’t leave me,” he quietly said, his gaze focused on the deck.

  He hugged him, hard. “Never. You’re stuck with me, buddy.”

  “I’m tired of losing the people I love, Aar,” he said as his voice choked with emotion. “If I lose you, too, I swear to the gods I will kill myself. I don’t want to be alone. I can’t stand this.”

  “We’ll get him back, Caph. I promise. I’m sure they won’t hurt him. They’re diplomats. They can’t risk an interstellar incident over something like that.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah, I think. I know.” In fact he wasn’t sure, but no way in hell would he admit that to Caph.

  Chapter Twenty

  Over the next couple of days, she grew to think of herself as Emi and not Erin. She still answered to both names. The longer she spent with Ford she didn’t gain much in the way of memories, just a stray snippet here and there, usually the memory of someone saying something. But she quickly came to fall in love with Ford all over again.

  They didn’t try to synthesize the antidote despite finally deciphering and translating Beyant equivalents. Ford was afraid what might happen if they used the wrong things or in the wrong combinations. She agreed that under the circumstances it was best to wait. Considering the time that had already passed, they presumed it might not make any difference anyway.

  Ford struggled to learn the new language. “You know,” he said one afternoon, “I’m never going to be an expert in speaking Beyant.” But by the end of the first month, he knew enough to keep up with conversations. Deciphering the written version was a different matter. He still relied on Emi to translate that. Yanna, the ambassador, and the others came to trust and even like Ford.

  One evening at dinner, the ambassador spoke up. “I have been thinking. Because you are the husband of my daughter, that means you are my son-in-law and should be officially recognized as such.”

  Ford looked at Emi in confusion. “Huh?”

  She smiled. “Yes, that’s what he said. You’re his son-in-law.”

  Yanna, his father, and the other Beyants in attendance all lifted their cups to Ford in a salute.

  Ford smiled and kissed Emi. “Welcome to the family, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  * * * *

  They made love almost every night, Emi as eager as Ford to make up for lost time. She couldn’t get enough of him. During the day he worked with her and Pachya in the labs, or spent time on the bridge learning about their ship’s systems. Two months into their journey, while taking a turn on the scanners, Ford practiced by looking at the escort ships in the convoy accompanying them to Mars.

  The last one caught his eye. As he fine-tuned the frequency to read the ship’s beacon code, he let out a whoop of joy that scared the crap out of the other bridge crew.

  Yanna and Emi ran over. “What is it?” Emi asked.

  Beyond excited, Ford pointed at the signal and reverted fully to standard, unable to think of the words fast enough in Beyant.

  “There she is! It’s them! There she is!”

  Confused, Yanna turned to Emi for clarification. “Ford, who?” Emi asked. “They? She?”

  He grabbed her and hugged her, smiling from ear to ear. “The Tamora Bight! Look, that’s our DSMC beacon code! Aaron and Caph, they’re following us. I never should have doubted them being able to find me. They know I’m here. They’re following us to Mars!”

  Her breath caught in her throat as she stared at the scanner signature. She reached out and touched the screen. “Aaron and Caph.” She’d only seen their faces in the photos on Ford’s picture card and in her dreams. Their voices still wouldn’t come to mind.

  So close. So close she wished she could touch them.

  Her fingers stroked the screen as her tears flowed.

  Ford saw. “Hey, this is good, babe. What’s wrong?”

  “Will they still want me?” she asked softly enough only Ford could hear.

  He frowned. “What? That’s crazy. Why wouldn’t they still want you?”

  “I’ve been gone so long.”

  “Honey, a day away from you is too fucking long. Seven months is torture, believe you me. But abso-fucking-lutely they want you back. I’ll be lucky I can get so much as a passing glance from you for the first few weeks we’re all back together. They’re not going to want to let you go.”

  He enveloped her in his arms, drawing her close and stroking her back. She always felt safe with him.

  As safe as she’d felt on the B’autachia.

  “I’m scared,” she whispered against his shirt.

  He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Those are the last two guys you have to be scared of.”

  “Of never remembering.”

  She felt his melancholy as he hugged her more tightly. She wasn’t sure if it w
as possible for him to feel truly sad now that they were back together. “Babe, even if you never remember, that’s okay. We’ll make new memories. All four of us together. I promise.”

  * * * *

  Aaron and Caph barely spoke. Not because they were upset at each other, but running a ship as large as the Tamora Bight with just the two of them took its toll, especially when combined with sleeping alone every night and compounded by their existing grief over losing Emi.

  Aaron didn’t let himself think about the possibility of Emi also being on that vessel. Dead or alive. It would hurt too fucking much if he was wrong.

  He would kick Ford’s ass, then fuck it, then kick it again once they got him back. Maybe not in that order, but close enough. In what little time he and Caph could spend together, Aaron tried to hold the other man, not that they could or were in a mood to do much more than cuddle. When they reached Mars, they would get Ford back and the three of them would go to a Martian resort for a couple of weeks.

  And then maybe he would talk to them about giving up the Bight for good. Graymard, under the circumstances, would give them Earth-based jobs. They could do training. They had the experience.

  He didn’t want to lose anyone else. Death was always an inevitable part of life, but Caph was right. It wasn’t worth losing those you loved to space. First Kels, then Emi.

  Now their chatterbox.

  He never thought he’d miss the twinspeak, but he longed for the days when he had to order only one of them to talk around him.

  They can talk themselves hoarse if I can just have Ford back. Please, gods, please let us get him back safely.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The closer they drew to Mars, the more anticipation Emi felt from not only her shipmates, but from Ford as well. He also spent more time talking in Beyant with her, although sometimes they spoke a confusing jumble of her in Beyant, with him replying in English, that they both understood yet left their Beyant shipmates at times scratching their heads.

  They were less than three weeks out from Mars when Emi awoke before Ford in the wee hours one morning. She lay there in their bunk, tightly cuddled against his warm body and wishing for sleep to return.

  Unfortunately, her stomach wouldn’t comply. She barely had time to roll away from Ford before jumping up and racing to the facility, where she threw up the remnants of her dinner from the night before.

  Immediately, Ford rushed in behind her, pulling her hair back away from her face and holding it for her. “Are you all right, babe?”

  She spit into the bowl, eyes closed, and shook her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “Maybe something last night didn’t agree with you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’ve been in space too long for it to be space sickness. You went through that pretty bad when we lifted from Earth, but once you got over it, it never came back.”

  In her limited recollection, she ran through a list of symptoms and ailments and tried to narrow down the possibilities. Something was wrong with her, of that much she was certain. She’d felt a lot of fatigue in the last few days that wasn’t normal for her. And now the vomiting.

  Her eyes dropped closed as she tried to think of the last time she’d had a cycle and she couldn’t. It had been after Ford arrived, but she was now overdue if the four-week pattern was normal for her.

  “Babe?”

  “Can I ask you a stupid question?”

  “You can ask me anything you want. I don’t know if I’ll have an answer for you.”

  She switched to English, because in her state, it made her stomach twist to spend that much energy trying to come up with Beyant equivalents. “You said you’re a medic.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Medical knowledge?”

  “Yeah, sure. Not a brain surgeon, but I can hold my own on the basics. Why?”

  “What do you know about reproductive organs?”

  “Um, Emi, you’re scaring me.”

  She looked up into his blue gaze. “How often do I have…” She struggled for the phrase in English until it finally popped into her brain. “Menstrual cycles. How often do they happen?”

  He blinked a few times. “You’re really starting to scare me now.”

  She didn’t answer, just waited for his reply.

  “Every four weeks or so, I guess. I think. Why? Do you think this is your period doing this?”

  Period. That was the word that had escaped her. “What happens when a period is late?”

  He snorted. “Nice try, sweetheart. We’re both chipped. It’s a lot of things, including birth control…”

  She must have looked horrified, because he stopped, staring at her.

  Eventually, in a whisper, he said, “Please don’t tell me your chip’s gone.”

  “Back of the neck, under the scalp?”

  He closed his eyes. “Fuck!”

  * * * *

  Once she got her stomach under control they awoke Pachya, who removed the small specimen container from his locked storage cabinet and showed it to Ford with a questioning look. “This?” He stood there in his bathrobe, which was definitely not how Emi was used to seeing the medical officer.

  Ford took the specimen container, a mixed soup of emotions flooding from him so fast that Emi couldn’t keep up.

  She reached out and touched his arm. “Please, what is it?” She suspected she knew, but she prayed with her ruined memory that she was mistaken.

  He leaned against a counter as he stared at the tiny chip. “This,” he said, “is a crew pairing chip. We each have one. They do a lot of things, like ensuring the crew stays sexually faithful to each other, if they are paired that way.” In his distress he spoke standard. Emi struggled to translate as best she could for Pachya, who stood there listening with a frown on his face and his arms crossed over his chest.

  “It keeps people from raping each other on a ship,” he said. “It didn’t protect you from that fucker on the Bight because he technically wasn’t raping you in the way normally registering on the chips. It was, from his end, a medical procedure, even if against your will.

  “The chips also allow for tracking crew members in emergencies. It’s probably how Aaron realized I’d ended up here and followed us. He likely had the station’s security office track me via my chip, and it showed where I’d gone.”

  She waited for him to continue, but he stared at the chip.

  Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. “What else?”

  He let out a sigh and slowly turned his head to look at her. She still couldn’t decipher exactly what it was he was feeling, but suspected he couldn’t, either. “It’s birth control. Female birth control. It means when you’re chipped, we can’t accidentally get you pregnant.” He handed the container back to Pachya, then pulled her to him and kissed her. “It means there’s a good chance that this”—he laid his hand on her belly—“means you’re carrying my baby.”

  * * * *

  Ford kept the other half of the equation from everyone else as news spread throughout the ship and the ambassador and Yanna both joyously congratulated the couple. Until he knew he was right, he refused to say anything that might dampen the happy mood.

  Besides, he didn’t know what havoc, exactly, the things Kayehalau had given her had wreaked on her body. He also didn’t know what kind of effect the Beyant water or foods she still sometimes ate would have on the baby. He also had no way of giving her any kind of prenatal care, or scanners he could use to evaluate the baby’s health.

  He couldn’t even confirm she was pregnant other than helping her through her morning sickness every day.

  He struggled as his emotions continually cycled between joy at them expecting, trying to temper his joy for fear of something being wrong with the baby, and sorrow that Aaron and Caph weren’t there with them to share this moment.

  But as they drew closer to Mars and Emi began to recall more things from her medical school training, she looked up at him
one day from where she’d lain down on their bunk after lunch to rest.

  “I don’t feel good.”

  He got up and walked over to her, sitting next to her. He rarely let her out of his sight. Yanna and the ambassador had been extremely gracious about not letting them be separated. “What’s wrong? Want me to get you a damp cloth for your head?” Sometimes when she experienced nausea from her poorly named morning sickness, that struck her at all hours of the day, a cool, damp cloth for her forehead helped her feel better.

  “No.” He admitted her color looked paler than it had, and not in a good, normal way. As in she bore a greyish tinge to her flesh that he hadn’t noticed before, and her face, her features already thinner from the weight she’d lost, looked pinched.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I hurt.” She touched her abdomen. “Here.”

  “Right or left side?”

  “Left.”

  He raised her shirt and gently palpated, but while she let out a low hiss of pain when he probed the lower left quadrant of her belly, she didn’t show any obvious signs of appendicitis. “I don’t know what to tell you. If we were on board the Bight, I could get the scanners out and give you an immediate answer.”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  Her soft, certain tone chilled him. “What? Are you cramping? Have you spotted?”

  She shook her head. “I just know something’s wrong.”

  The pain came and went over the next week, until it began to grow more insistent, still located in her lower left abdomen.

  One afternoon, after she awoke from a nap, he spotted her tears. “What’s wrong, babe? Is the pain worse?”

  “I had a dream,” she said.

  He gathered her into his arms. “What kind of dream?”

  “I was in a room of people. Like a classroom. I’ve had it a few times, but this was the first time I could hear what they were saying.”