Pirate's Bane; Black Star

Agent Coreance walks through the quiet halls of the minimum security wing of the superstructure and stops, as he had for the past few days, outside the cell of Alex Perez.

With a single curt and quick nod the guards within the control tower releases the locks, thought Alex is now in the minimum security wing she is still considered a prisoner and must to be treated as such. The door’s alarms disengage first and then the locks slide back with a fairly quiet grind of metal on metal. The door then splits along a seam from the bottom left corner to the top right corner.

Inside waits Alex, sitting on the thin yet fairly comfortable mattress that Coreance had gotten for her thought his superiors thought he was going soft on an inmate for it. In his mind Alex has more than proven her innocents, and the evidence backs him up, but more importantly she is also pregnant and needs help. She looks up at him, her focus previously solely occupied by the tablet she hugs to her chest. “Is it time already?”

“Not for your trial no,”Coreance said sadly, “that is not why I am here today, please come with me.”

With a resigned sigh Alex puts down the pad and stands up, her stomach showing the first signs of expansion due to the life growing within her. “What’s this all about?”

“You will see.” He assures her as he turns and lead the way.

“If we aren’t going to see the judges does that mean we are going to see Lerra, is she awake?” Alex’s want to smile from ear to ear at the very thought of seeing her love again almost rips her face in two but she holds it back, holds back the smile that can decapitate her. She has learned over the past weeks the full extent of the damage her slug had done.

Lerra’s chest and stomach had been ripped apart inside her. Her digestive track and been punctured by the bullet and allowed her rather virulent digestive fluids flood the stomach cavity, pitting her gastric system with holes that teams of micro surgeon nano-bots were still repairing, add to that the blood lose and her brains oxygen carbon deprivation. She still had a long road to recovery in front of her.

“I am sorry,” he says with a soft shake of his head, “but she is not yet awake though when we are done I have been granted permission to allow you a small, mind you small, window of time to see her.”

Alex grabs Coreance’s arm, stopping him, before she spins him around to stare straight into his central eyes. “You’re not shitting me are you?”

“I don’t completely understand the turn of phrase but as you humans say I get the gist, and no.” He says with complete sincerity. “I am not shitting you, but come we have an appointment to keep.” He starts walking again and Alex falls into step behind him, barely able to contain the smile rushing to split her face in two.

She is so engrossed with the thought of seeing Lerra again her body goes into autopilot, leaving her internal navigational interface to map her course, counting her steps and marking her direction. Before she knows it she bumps into Coreance’s back since he stopped so abruptly, he knows where he is going and had been paying attention unlike her. “Why’d you stop so fast?” She asks rubbing her nose.

“Because,” he says flatly, “we are here.”

Still rubbing the sore end of her noise Alex takes a step to the left to see around Agent Coreance and looks at the door with hope and more than a little trepidation. “Medical?” She asks looking at the door and sees the symbol for the alliance medical units, an overlapping pair of blue crescent moons, if this was a Sol alliance ship it would have been a green cross but this wasn’t so it was a pair of overlapping blue crescent moons. “Is this where Lerra is?” She asks hopefully.

“No,” Agent Coreance says just as flatly as before, “this is where you are going to get a proper physical examination.”

“Didn’t I get one when you people arrested me?”

“That was a simple examination to find out the extent of your injures, this will be a full examination.”

“I don’t like doctors.”

“I will add that to the list.”

“You’re keeping a list.”

“Of course.”

Alex gives Coreance a glare that might burn a hole through a sun. “You’re going to burn that when we’re done with each other right.”

“We shall see.” He says reaching forward and taps out a quick series of numbers on the lock next to the door. It slides open on well used hinges and Agent Coreance steps aside to allow Alex to enter. “After you.”

Alex scowls but still walks past Coreance and into the medical bay. “You should relax,” a strangely human and strangely female voice says, “too much stress isn’t good for you or the baby.” The voice says. Curiosity gets the better of her and Alex looks into the room and finds a woman sitting on an old style rolling stool chair chewing on the back of a pen. “Well,” she says, “get up on the exam table.”

Over the past few weeks she had thought to look at women differently, she had been trying to see them as well a man would, and in her scale if Lerra was a ten this woman is at least an eight point five or if she is feeling generous a nine. She has long wavy strawberry blond hair that fall in cascading waves down her back, stopping just below her shoulder blades. Her lips are full and pouty, lips she wishes she had though Lerra had assured her many times that her lips were more than pouty enough for her to never want to stop kissing. Wearing the completely unflattering uniform of loose black pants, blue tunic, and blue lab coat, it is hard for Alex to gage her body but if it is anything like her blue eyes she has to be sexy, and that makes her even more nervous and self-conscious.\

“Come on Lt.” She says with a honey sweet accent carrying military bearing. “Or do you need me to get naked too?”

“No.” Alex says weakly. She looks over her shoulder at Agent Coreance.

He raises his antenna in his now familiar look of surprise. Alex gives him a look over her shoulder and moves her head to motions for him to turn around. Agent Coreance raises his antenna up in his quizzical look of confusion.

“Ugh.” She groans. “Do I have to spell it out to you?”

“If you would explain what you are on about maybe I would understand.”

“Turn around or get out.” She commands, glaring at him.

“Might I ask why?” He asks looking Alex in the eyes. “If you are worried about undressing in front me because I am male then don’t worry, I have no sexual feeling toward you or any of your species.”

“Like I care about your sexual urges or desires,” Alex snaps, “I didn’t care about that stuff back in the S.A. I don’t care about it here. What I do care about is people seeing me like this.” She says indicating her stomach. “I’m used to being strong and people seeing me as strong and fit and right now I am neither, I’m with child.”

“You are afraid of people seeing you with child?” He asks.

“No,” Alex says flatly, “not exactly.”

“That’s not it exactly,” the woman says, “it’s a sense of image. This woman sees herself as a warrior, someone who’s body is a tool, for someone she respects as a warrior to see her in a state where she is not in fighting form ruins her images of herself, it hurts her. Do you understand that?”

“Ah I see,” Coreance says seeming to understand, “it would be like showing an enemy a weakness before a battle.”

“Exactly,” the doctor sighs, “now get the hell out of this exam room until I call you.”

“Protocol dictates that I not leave her unattended.”

“Protocol,” the woman says with a skeptical look, “I’ve seen the files, just how many times have you broken protocol when it involves this case Agent Coreance out of Malorinna by Torvanic?”

For one of the few times that Alex can remember Agent Coreance looks actually stunned, he actually coughs and covers his mouth with his fist. “I will be waiting outside of the door until you are finished.”

“Good,” the woman says sharply and points with her pen toward the door, “now get out.” They both watch as Agent Coreance nodes and turns around to walk out of the medical bay’s door, then the woman turns and focuses the intensity of her blue eyed gaze on Alex. “Now I don’t have all day and this exam will go better if you’re naked, so strip.” With resignation Alex turns her back to the doctor and began to work on the clasps and zippers that are keeping her clothed. She had done it time and time again in the shower stall in her cell, but this time, with another woman, a woman other than Lerra, is making her nervous. “Something wrong?” She asks. “I though you liked pretty girls?”

Alex looks over her shoulder at the doctor, and half dressed as she is and trying hard to keep her orange jumpsuit up to hide her breasts, to see her smirk with those pouty lips. Only to remind her how much she wishes her lips were pouty, and maybe her butt isn’t so small, Lerra had assured her they are, both, more than adequate. “No.” She says in a blatant and stubborn lie.

“Wow,” she exclaims with her arms crossed over her chest, “you really suck at lying.” She smiles and sits back down on her chair crossing her legs and swinging her foot in its lacquered red heals that is so not regulation.

“Alright,” Alex snaps spinning on the woman, “you know so much about me but who the hell are you?”

She gives her a tilted, near to seductive but far from innocent, smile. “I out rank you and now you ask. My name is Master Chief Tylor, that’s Command Master Chief Petty Officer, retired, so no, maybe, I don’t out rank you but I at least rank as high as you retired Lt.”

“I don’t get it,” Alex says looking at Master Chief Tylor.

“What don’t you understand Lt?”

“First off don’t call me Lt. my name is Alex, second what is a Sol Alliance Master Chief doing working for the United System’s Alliance?”

“Simple, I needed a job and they offered. I have been retired since the beginning of the Trinearus wars.”

“Hold on,” Alex says raising her hand to stop the Master Chief and forgetting all about her half down jumpsuit even as it bunched up around her waist, “that was over a hundred years ago, how the hell can you be…” she waves her hand at Tylor, indicating her body, “you look younger than me.”

“Did you think your daughter is the only hybrid in existence?”

In all honesty she had thought so, but now that she thought about it only made sense that there would be more than one hybrid how else could humans know that there can be hybrids if there hadn’t been hybrids before. “I had never thought about it but I guess I had.”

“Well she’s not, I’m one of the first my mother was human hence the looks. As for my age well I’m well over a hundred, closer to two actually and I’ve seen a lot, so get to stripping already. And don’t worry, you’re not my type, maybe my younger sisters but not mine.”

“How old is she?” Alex asks as she slides the coveralls over her butt and completely unflattering underwear. She stops at her panties and tries to think to when she started to worry about whether or not her clothing is flattering or just working, that is another thing she has to thank Lerra for, or at least her mother would thank her for since she has always been a tomboy.

“Only about thirty,” the master chief says casually, “we have different mothers. Actually she is fallowing in my footsteps a Petty Officer first class of the SSAS Longbow.”

“Isn’t that a Black Space patroller?” Alex asks turning around to look at the Master Chief.

“You know of it?”

“No,” Alex admits, “but I keep up with what ships are flying through black space.”

“Interesting, now if you would be so kind as to take your seat on the examination chair we’ll get this over with.” Grudgingly she moves toward the exam chairs and takes a seat on the fake leather. “You know the drill by now, legs up on the stirrups.”

“Good I hate that word,” Alex grumbles as she puts her legs up on the stirrups, “I used to ride horses back home on Riku, saddles have stirrups, exam chairs shouldn’t.”

The Master Chief rolls her stole into the space between Alex’s legs. “I’ve never ridden a horse, what are they like?”

“Depends,” Alex says as the Master Chief breaths on the end of a probe and slips it inside. “Wow! A bit of warning next time!”

“Sorry,” the Master Chief says with no hint of sorrow.

“Why can’t you just do an ultrasound?”

“Because you’re having a half breed baby,” the Master Chief explains as she turns a dial and the probe opens and releases a cool gel like thing into her,” I have to use a deep probe scan using micro bots to scan the fetus.”

“Why?”

“Normally a human fetus is suspended in an amniotic sac, made of protein, filled with enhanced water, basically water with electrolytes, proteins, carbohydrates, phospholipids, urea, things like that. But for children like yours the amniotic sac isn’t protein exactly, it’s a mixture of protein and cellulose, making the walls of that sac much stronger than for purely human births, besides that the fetus’s cells are made up of cellulose with a protein base, it’s all very complicated. Suffice to say the sac as stronger and the fluid is much more viscous than normal human amniotic fluids meaning that an ultra sound would be so badly distorted and warped that it would be impossible to tell more than the basic shape of your child. If it’s wasn’t a Zarinian half breed you wouldn’t even know the sex.”

“So I am having a girl.”

“Oh yeah,” the Master Chief says with a twisted smile, “you’re going to have a girl just a sexy as me.”

“Is she going to live as long?”

“Oh yeah.” The Master Chief, turns from between her legs and back toward the nearest medical screen and types in a few unseen commands. “Hey do you want to meet her, do you want to meet your daughter?”

“That’s a stupid question,” Alex says without thinking, “where is she?”

“Look over here mommy.” The Master Chief says with for once a sincere smile on her face. “Take a look at your baby.” She hits one last key and the two dimensional screen become a three dimensional projection floating in the air above her work station. In the blue green light floats first a sac like a kidney bean. “Hold on for a moment, we’re going in.” With a quick sequence of keys the image shifts and the kidney bean fades away and in its place appears a fetus, vaguely humanoid in appearance but with definite defined limbs.

“How old,” Alex found herself strangely at a loss for words and chocked up and her throat swelling until it felt like she is trying to swallow a tennis ball, “how far along is she?”

“Ten, eleven weeks along but she still has about ten months to go before she is born, so you have time to pick a good name.”

“I have a name chosen.”

“You want to tell me?”

“No, not yet.”

“Okay, well she’s doing just fine so get dressed and I’ll get the Agent back in here to take you and your baby back to your cell.”

“Can you give me a few minutes?” Alex asks though her eyes are focusing solely on the image of the baby growing within in her stomach.

The Master Chief looks from the door back at Alex and sighs a soft a resigned sigh. “Alright, I’ll give you twenty minutes okay.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh don’t worry you’ll owe me for this later.” Alex doesn’t even hear as the Master Chief leaves the room to let her watch her daughter on the projection.