Hercules 500 Read online

  But that had been the end of the battle with her stomach.

  She’d sucked in a deep breath of the combined aromas and her stomach erupted like a volcano.

  The poor bastard found himself standing in a lake a puke, with speckles all over his boots and even up higher on the legs of his uniform.

  Without a word, he whirled and practically ran from the room.

  The vacuum bot had surged from the wall and promptly bogged down in the mess since it was designed to remove dry debris from the floor.

  Anika covered her head, trying to keep from puking again as the air filled with the stench.

  Thankfully, it was a strong enough scent that the ventilation system kicked in.

  That helped some.

  A few minutes later, a guard, wearing a hazmat suit, entered the cabin guiding a contamination unit that sprayed some sort of bubbles and then sucked up the whole mess. The broken vac unit was bagged and carried out.

  Anika was embarrassed but so grateful she felt like crying when a server bot was sent in with water and some sort of wafers.

  She took them and set them down on a table, but the need to clean the horrible from her mouth overrode the need to keep lying still. She knew she was going to reach a point where she was going to puke again if she couldn’t get rid of the taste in her mouth.

  So she got up with an effort, took the glass of water, and crossed the cabin to the dry sink in the corner. She used half the contents to swish around her mouth and spit into the basin and then returned to her bunk and settled to sip the remainder and nibble at the wafers.

  By the time the guards returned with a containment unit for her, she’d begun to feel better—well enough to protest.

  For all the good it did.

  She was loaded on the special gurney and carried down to the medical center to be quarantined until she was fully examined.

  She spent twenty four hours under observation and under guard, worrying that she’d contracted something horrible and was going to die. Then the doctor had come in to dismiss her, told her she was pregnant and how to handle the ‘morning sickness’ associated with some pregnancies.

  The shockwave that washed over her made her feel faint enough that she was glad she was still sitting down. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. Otherwise I wouldn’t have told you and I wouldn’t be releasing you to return to your cabin. But you have nothing contagious and are not only not in danger, but you’re no danger to anyone else.”

  Anika still couldn’t take it in. She felt … numb. “Is it … is there more than one? I mean, I was taking fertility ….”

  “Ah! That would explain it. Yes. Two. A male and a female.”

  That information produced a roller coaster emotional ride as she was escorted back to her cabin and left in peace to digest the information.

  She was thrilled that there were two and one of each, boy and girl.

  She was relieved that she would only be carrying and delivering two.

  She was disappointed that the big family she’d envisioned would just be two.

  One shot at being a mother. She wouldn’t get to spread out the joy of having newborns. She’d have both at once and they’d grow up together.

  If she was lucky and there were no complications.

  By the time she’d begun to adjust to her new situation, she’d managed to get the morning sickness pretty much under control.

  Thankfully, it wasn’t really bad. As long as she didn’t try to get up immediately and put something in her empty stomach before she did get up, she was ok.

  She had plenty to keep her occupied at that point—mostly flights of fantasy, granted, but she also considered more mundane things.

  Specifically nesting.

  By the doctor’s calculations—and thankfully there was no guess work involved in her pregnancy!—she would be almost halfway through her pregnancy when they arrived on Beauterre.

  That was actually a pretty dismaying realization, mostly because she hadn’t had a clue of what she was getting herself in to.

  She was a long way from being able to perform at peak now, and she was barely pregnant.

  Of course, the doctor had said the morning sickness would probably disappear by the time she’d made it through her first trimester, but she’d be three months pregnant by then and she had a bad feeling that she still wouldn’t be at peak physical condition—not in the sense that she’d be able to function like a non-pregnant woman.

  That wouldn’t be anything to be particularly anxious about if she had a house waiting to be made comfortable for the arrival of her family.

  But, she didn’t.

  The company funding the expedition would put up any colonists that needed a place to stay as long as they needed one. They’d thoughtfully set it up so that rent would be added to the tab everyone was already running up in terms of travel arrangements.

  There were land-lots waiting to be claimed. And she’d already paid her fee for hers. All she had to do was claim it.

  The problem was that it was raw acreage. There would be all sorts of things that would have to be done before she could even start working on a place to live.

  That brought her mom to mind.

  If her mother had room, she might be convinced to allow her only daughter to crash until she could get her own place built.

  That would save money toward the building project.

  That thought didn’t make her particularly happy, but it was a workable plan and she decided to just test the waters and see what her mother would have to say about it.

  Unfortunately, she was still under house arrest and not allowed to just go down to use the communications. It was another week before she was escorted down to call her mother.

  Naturally, her mother wasn’t sitting around waiting for her to call so she wasn’t available to take it.

  Days passed before her mom called her back.

  “Hey mom! I’m preg!” Anika greeted her mother baldly, practically dancing in her seat with excitement.

  Belinda’s bright greeting smile froze. Her eyes glazed. She blinked a couple of times—slowly. “You’re …? You’re serious? You’re pregnant?” She went back to blinking, obviously trying to adjust her thinking and searching her memory for any mention previously of Anika embracing that state while still in transit. “But … uh ….” She frowned. “I didn’t think you were going to implant the seedlings until you got here?”

  Some of Anika’s enthusiasm waned. She felt her face heating as her mind leapt to the ‘implanting’. “Yeah … uh … well, that was the original plan, but you know how these things are. Plans, I mean. A person has to be flexible when the situation changes.”

  She considered how much she wanted to say in front of the guard, but, really, would she ever see him again? Did his opinion actually matter?

  “And the thing is … they locked Chance up because Cole jumped him in the hold checking out my locker and then they both got locked in the brig—which was completely unfair since Chance was just defending himself. And Chance was holding my seedlings for … uh … safekeeping. Well, that wouldn’t have mattered if Cole hadn’t followed us onto the ship.”

  “Who’s Cole?”

  “The cop that … uh … we met up with after we bought the seed.”

  Belinda looked horrified. “And he … he actually followed you on board?”

  “Yes. Persistent bastard. Not but what I can sort of understand, now, but …. Well, anyway I was advised that it would be safest to go ahead and implant the seedlings so it would be a done deal when we got to Beauterre in case a dispute about ownership arose.

  “Then I discovered the captain of the ship is just a total a-hole and tyrant. I wasn’t allowed to see him at all after he got locked up so I went down to try to … uh ….” She decided bribery wouldn’t sound good and actually could/might be held against her. “Convince Sebastian to let me talk to him for just a few minutes and …. Well, I honestly just don’t know how it happened.”r />
  “Men!” Belinda said derisively. “Just give them a little power ….”

  Anika blinked at her, all at sea. “Power?”

  “Tyrant?” Belinda prompted.

  “Oh!” Anika blushed. “The captain’s a woman.”

  Belinda gaped at her but recovered fairly quickly. “Oh. Well, mannish women ….”

  Anika couldn’t really say the captain was mannish either, but she wasn’t actually interested in defending the captain.

  “Who’s Sebastian?” Belinda asked while Anika was trying to recall the threads of her conversation.

  “This absolutely dreamy ….” She broke off when the guard behind her issued a snicker/cough. “The guard on duty. And somehow we got into this … uh … deeply romantic … uh … discussion.”

  Snicker/snort.

  She cut a glare in the guard’s direction. “And I guess it might have gotten a little loud, because Chance thought something was going on and he broke out. He looked like he might attack poor Sebastian, so I leapt between them … to … uh … try to distract him.” She blushed again. “And it worked. I told Sebastian to leave while I had a … uh … deeply romantic discussion with Chance, but he didn’t. And somewhere in the rounds Chance implanted the seed for me.

  “So now I’m under house arrest … because that tyrant considered the whole thing was my fault somehow.”

  Belinda studied her for many long moments after Anika concluded her tale. Finally, she said, “Well, I’m sure we can sort this out when you get here, honey. Meanwhile, I am thrilled about the grandchildren! And very excited that I won’t have long to wait at all—even though it may be a bit inconvenient …. But it’s great news! And I think, under the circumstances, not really a bad thing that you’re under house arrest—where you’re safe. And the …uh … guys are locked up, too.”

  She made a face and jerked her head faintly toward the guard standing just out of view.

  Anika stared at her blankly. “Yes, well … I guess,” she agreed doubtfully.

  “So … not long now and babies on the way. I’ll have to see what I can round up for the nursery.” Belinda shook her head. “It won’t be easy. This place is so damned prim ….”

  The video vanished and the line went dead abruptly. Anika stared at the blank screen with more than a touch of uneasiness and finally turned to the guard. “Weird. We lost the connection.”

  The guard stepped forward, frowning as he examined the console. “Do you want me to try to reconnect?”

  Anika considered it but decided maybe her allotted time was up. “No, thanks. That’s ok. It’s just weird that she got cut off in the middle of a sentence.”

  And what had she been trying to say? The place was prim …? Primitive?

  She shook her head. That wasn’t what any of the posters said about Beauterre.

  And they couldn’t lie about it. That would be false advertising and that was against the law.

  She must have meant something else.

  * * * *

  “So,” Cole said conversationally, “What’s the plan when we get to Beauterre?”

  Chance turned his head to stare at Cole uncomfortably, wondering if he was talking to him. He still could not tell, so he turned and glanced a little questioningly at Sebastian.

  In truth, he had no plan, but the very fact that Cole had asked suggested that he was expected to have one and he did not have sufficient data to formulate a plan of any kind and Sebastian had warned him to be careful about exposing himself as a cyborg, that many humans considered them dangerous and unpredictable.

  “I will build a farm,” Sebastian responded confidently. “I am to have a land lot of fifty acres when I arrive on the new world as payment for my service during the trip.”

  Cole stared at him for a long, long moment. “And?”

  Sebastian frowned. “What?”

  Cole snorted a derisive laugh. “That’s it? The bastards really fucked you over! Those land lots are going for fifty credits each—ten per acre. If that’s all the compensation they offered you, that ain’t shit as a payment for damned near a year’s work.”

  Sebastian’s lips tightened, but he held his temper with an effort. “There is free transport, as well, and food and lodging for nearly a year.”

  Cole shrugged. “I suppose that’s a bit better, but I still say they fucked you over.”

  “And I am to have a small, temporary shelter and a year’s supplies once we arrive on Beauterre.”

  That actually sounded like a fairly sweet deal—which not only surprised Cole, but also gave rise to some envy.

  He wouldn’t even be getting ‘free’ transport, room and board, he thought in disgust. He would have to pay for it—and probably staggering interest—like everybody else that hadn’t had the money to cover their fare.

  Which he imagined was just about everybody.

  So they would be in debt up to their eyeballs when they got there and probably never dig their way out, even if they were able to hit the ground running and immediately be able to fend for themselves.

  And that was doubtful.

  No, more likely they would go deeper in debt because they would have to add to the debt they were accruing from the trip by buying what they needed to build a home and a business of some sort or get a job somewhere that wouldn’t pay shit.

  He wasn’t quite that bad off. He’d had a pretty respectable nest egg put back—due mostly to the fact that he didn’t have a fucking life outside of the job and the compensation he’d gotten from being blown to hell and back when they’d breached the sperm bank and the terrorists holding it had been waiting with enough explosives to level the place.

  He had enough to cover his transport and enough to buy a land lot when he got there.

  The problem was, he was no farmer and he had no aspirations to be one.

  Maybe he could just continue as a lawman? They were bound to need peacekeepers just like they did on Earth.

  He could get a small place in town ….

  Or head back to Earth on the next ship heading that way.

  He knew he wasn’t going to, though.

  That bomb hadn’t just blown him to bits so that they had to piece him back together with bionic pretty much everything.

  It had deprived him of any ability to have children of his own at any point in his life.

  As a soldier, first, and then a first responder, the government had insisted upon collecting his seed for storage, though, and he’d had several samples put back.

  Which should have saved the day insofar as his reproductive issues—except it was the sperm bank the bastards targeted.

  It was just a miracle that any of his banked seedlings had made it through that blast. He wasn’t going to abandon them on some alien world!

  With a woman he barely knew well enough to recognize on the street—be she ever so easy on the eyes!

  Germaine to those thoughts the guard that brought them lunch also brought staggering news. He delivered Anika’s baby announcement.

  All three prisoners simply stared blankly at the guard, struggling to absorb news they should have been expecting—or Chance and Cole should have, in any event.

  Abruptly, Chance grinned broadly. “My Anika will be a mother!” He paused, turning that thought over with a sense of wonder. “And I will be a father!”

  Rage instantly engulfed both Cole and Sebastian, but Cole voiced his anger first.

  “That’s why I couldn’t find them! You had them on you! And how the fuck do you figure that? That was my seedlings you implanted in her!” he growled. “Those are my kids!”

  “Those are my children!” Sebastian snarled. “She agreed that she would be my mate! We mated. I gave her young!”

  “In your dreams, she did,” Cole snapped. “I damned sure don’t recall hearing anything but a lot of grunting and groaning—mostly from you. And, she waltzed with Chance after her dance with you, if you’ve forgotten!”

  “They were not yours,” Chance argued, “o
nly because it was … uh …. Anika acquired them and it is she who paid, but she chose me to be her domestic and I implanted the seedlings and that means that I am hers and she is mine and the off-spring will be ours!”

  “What kind of logic is that?” Cole snarled. “What’s with the ‘I am hers so she is mine’ shit? And those seedlings were mine! Personally. We used them as bait.”

  Chance and Sebastian looked at him as if he had grown another head. “You used your own seedlings as bait?”

  Cole felt his face redden.

  As much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, he’d been bulldozed into it.

  He sure as hell hadn’t wanted to, but he also hadn’t wanted to admit that the blast had left him sterile and that the seedlings he had put up years earlier were all that was left of his legacy.

  Stupid—especially when it was no doubt in his file and probably well known by everybody who felt nosey enough to look.

  But—announcing it was just not something he had been able to bring himself to do and when the captain had told him to use his own seedlings to bait the trap, he had wimped out and said nothing.

  Well, he thought grimly, he wasn’t letting it go without a fight!

  If Anika was pregnant, it was with his seedlings.

  And as far as he was concerned, she’d just picked him to be her mate!

  * * * *

  Cole had joined Anika in the rec room. She wasn’t certain why unless it was just because she was one of the few people on board that he even sort of knew, but he had sat with her several times since his release.

  And that was mostly it.

  He didn’t seem to be much for conversation.

  He did seem to be a good listener, though, when she felt like talking.

  A slight commotion at the other end of the vast room drew her attention and she looked that way in time to see Sebastian step through the doorway. He paused there, surveyed the room and, upon spotting her, began to stride purposefully in her direction.

  Chance appeared moments behind him and made a valiant effort to catch up to Sebastian and outpace him. They were about halfway across the room when he managed to draw abreast. Sebastian slung out one arm and clothes-lined him when he tried to pass. Chance hit the floor, but bounded up almost the moment he touched down.