Spoilers: A lot for this chapter, but mainly for "Its Hour Come Round At Last", "The Widening Gyre", and "A Heart for Falsehood Framed" and "Home Fires". I've decided to ignore "Una Salus Victus" for story and simplicity reasons.
Author's Note: This is my longest chapter yet in this story, but it's kind of important, as it gives a lot of backstory. Thank you all for the reviews so far. I feel that I must warn you about something, however; this chapter deals with character death and miscarriage. If either of these, particularly the latter, bother you, please don't read further- I have no desire to cause anyone distress.
Disclaimer in Part One.
Chapter Seven: And We're Off
Beka decided to check with Trance before they left and arranged a meeting on Med deck that night. She arrived early.
"Trance?" she called, with no response. "All right, I'll just wait." She went over to the nearest console and punched up on of the schematics, studying it carefully.
It was the file Trance was keeping on her pregnancy. Everything was listed; height and weight, both hers and an approximation of the baby's; progress, test results, scans made. The only thing missing was the baby's sex, which Beka had asked her to blank, as she didn't want to know until the baby was actually born. At the bottom there were Trance's carefully worded notations, calculated not to reveal whether they were having a boy or a girl.
Beka's hand went to her stomach as she read over the notes. They were also phrased delicately so they didn't state one fact quite so bluntly: they had an immense risk of losing the baby. She had known, when she reassured Dylan, that she was downplaying the chances. Besides the fact that Tyr was Nietzschean, which raised the risk, there was that misdiagnosis. It was ironic- the baby would be fine once it was born, she just had to insure that she carried it for at least seven months.
"Hey, Beka," Trance said, walking in. "Did you say that you wanted me to do a checkup? You do know that you're not due for another week."
"I know, but I'll be at Rochester Drift in a week, so I figured it might be a good idea to get you to look now." She lay down on the medical bed, already familiar with the procedure, and waited as Trance activated the scans. "Rafe has this great deal lined up. Worth a full imperial, actually. Tyr and I are going with him on the Maru." She heard the faint hum of the scans stop and sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. "So, anything new?"
Trance smiled. "Plenty, but it's all normal. Eyes, ears, fingers, toes, even the bonespurs are developing. They'll stay under the skin for a few months after it's born, though."
"It's going to have bonespurs? Tyr'll be happy about that." They hadn't known whether it would or not. "Can I see?"
"Sure." Trance turned the monitor in her direction. "Look, there's an arm, that's the umbilical cord, there's its head and right there is a set of bonespurs... You should be able to feel it moving soon." She pointed out each body part, even though the scanned picture was clear enough that she didn't have to. "I need a blood sample and some amniotic fluid for a test, but that'll only take a minute. Can you lie back down?"
"What are these for?" Beka asked as she leaned back.
"These," Trance pulled amniotic fluid, flinching sympathetically, "are going to test for problems. Arm, please." She used another needle and drew blood. "One minute." She started up the machine and put in the ampoules.
Beka straightened. "I probably won't be gone all that long, but what happens when I hit five months?" To her surprise, the purple girl blushed a dark violet. "What?"
"Well," she started to rearrange a medical tray, "since you're high risk..." She was having trouble forming the next few words.
"Just say it, Trance."
"You're four and a half months along now. When you reach five months, it might be a good idea if," she took a deep breath, leaned forward conspiratorially, and whispered, "if you stopped having sex." She turned her normal shade and stood back up, looking pleased with herself that she had gotten the words out.
Beka was taken aback. "Nothing? For four months?"
"Nothing for four and a half. You're forgetting that you'll need a couple of weeks to heal after the baby's born."
"Remind me again why I'm doing this?"
"Because after four months, you and Tyr are going to have a beautiful little baby that you're going to love, I promise."
"You can't promise that. We could still lose it." Beka's hand drifted back to the bulge of her belly. She didn't want to anything to happen to the baby. She hadn't wanted it quite this early, but now that she had it, she couldn't lose it. She felt tears begin to prick at the corners of her eyes.
"No," Trance said forcefully. "I can't promise that. All I can tell you with any certainty is that, if you're really careful about health, and stress levels, and physical exertion, you're going to have a wonderful, healthy baby girl." She paused. "Or boy."
Beka half-smiled; it was better than crying. "Being prophetic, Trance?"
"Maybe." She quirked a corner of her lips up. "Or maybe I'm just guessing."
*****
"You guys ready to go?" Beka asked, pulling the pilot's chair up to the controls. She knew what Tyr was going to say before he said it.
"You are not piloting."
"Yes, I am." She flipped through the last of the preflight checks.
"No, you're not. Trance told you to avoid stress and physical exertion, and slipstreaming involves both." She had told him about the conversation the night before.
Beka sighed. "Those guidelines don't take effect until the fifth month. I've got two more weeks that I intend to take advantage of." All of the systems were clear to go. She reached for the straps, saying, "The only way you're getting me out of this is if I 'm unconscious or in labor."
Beka yelped as Tyr lifted her out of the chair.
"What are you doing! "
"Discovering that there's another way to get you out. "
He carried her back to the galley and gently deposited her on the counter. "You are not piloting."
"The hell I'm not!" she snorted, pushing off the counter and turning to the cockpit.
He intercepted her. "Beka, did I not warn you going into this? I 'm going to be overprotective, and nag you about every little detail, and not let you do anything." He looked into her eyes. "I'm going to do everything in my power to insure that you and the baby are healthy and finish this pregnancy full-term. That includes piloting this ship instead of letting you endanger two lives."
"Tyr..." She smiled and wrapped her arms around his waist. He returned the gesture. "All right, you can fly slipstream. I fly it whenever we have an appreciable distance between portals. Be careful about those valves, they may be a little stiff. And if you do anything to my ship, you're not going to live to see this kid born. Clear?"
"Perfectly." Tyr kissed her. "And now we have to get started before your brother gets impatient."
"You're a little late for that." Rafe interrupted from where he stood by the airlock door. "I got impatient a week ago."
"Hang on, we're going," Beka said mildly, untangling herself from her husband. "All we need is launch confirmation and we're gone." She called after Tyr, already retreating to the cockpit, "Remember, be careful of the valves! "
*****
Rafe was staring at her from where he was sitting drinking coffee. She'd already noticed, from being stuck on the same ship for a week with nowhere else to go, that that was almost all he drank. The stare, though, was starting to get unnerving.
Beka poured herself a glass of the juice sitting on the counter and joined him at the table. "You can stop staring, I think it's obvious that I'm pregnant."
He looked bemused. "No, I can see that. I was just wondering- how did you get to this? I visited you three years ago- you were single, independent. You were just staying on Andromeda until something better came along. Now, you're married, expecting, and second-in-command of the New Commonwealth. What happened?"
"What happened?" she repeated. "What happened was, we got attacked by Magog, the Commonwealth started to catch on, and I fell in love."
He stared. "You? In love?"
"Yes. It's been known to happen," she defended. "Tyr didn't leave, though." Unlike every single other male she had formed an emotional attachment to, including Dad and Rafe.
"I'll bet he wouldn't, after he got you pregnant," Rafe said unpleasantly.
"Rafe!" She sat up, furious. "If you even think that-"
"Then how exactly did all this happen?" Rafe demanded. "You haven't explained it, and I've had to pick up what I can. We've still got a day or two until we reach Rochester Drift, you have time to explain it."
"All right, but make yourself comfortable; it's a long story." She took a quick sip of her drink and started.
"Where it really starts, I guess, is almost a year after you came by. Andromeda malfunctioned and sent us on an old mission of hers. Before we could repair her and turn around, we were boarded by Magog. We..." She stopped. This had always been hard to think about, let alone talk of. "Tyr and Harper were infested with Magog larvae. Trance removed Tyr's and he barely survived, while Harper is taking medicine to keep his dormant. Dylan and Rommie were trapped in a nova bomb explosion and it was- if everything had gone like it should, they would be dead. Even Rev was pretty disturbed; it's part of the reason why he left.
"Something like that tends to change your viewpoint. About a week later, Tyr and I ran into each other on Obs. Deck. He apologized for being a pompous, prejudiced ass. I didn't have that much to apologize for, but I hadn't been all that pleasant to him over a year. I guess we started being friends right around then, so some good came out of it."
Here she stopped again. Her throat was already feeling dry, and some of what she talked about was hard to say. The Magog, both encounters with the Worldship, even Rev... so much of it had been terrifying or grievous that it was hard to look back.
Still she swallowed, took a deep breath, and plunged onward. "Rev, I think, had it the hardest of all of us then. We all came so close to death, but we survived. A part of him... didn't. He killed other Magog, came up against a creature that had claimed to be his god; he wasn't ever the same after that. He became more reclusive, and only stayed onboard for six months before leaving for a monastery. Right before the final battle with the Magog, we received word that he'd starved himself to death, just stopped eating. Said he couldn't live with himself anymore." She choked and could feel her eyes tear up. She hadn't really talked about this, and it never seemed like she had stopped grieving for Rev.
Rafe didn't say a word, but produced a tissue from somewhere and waited for her to finish.
"I'm sorry," she said when she regained the power of speech. "Rev was one of the reasons I wanted to do away with Enigma and the Worldship. We all had reasons- Harper had the larvae and his cousins, Dylan had the Commonwealth, I had family, and we all fought for Rev."
"Family?" Rafe asked. "What family? It's just you and me."
"Actually, by the time we went into battle with the Worldship, Tyr and I had been married a year already. I was scared that something would happen to him- all the senior staff were on different ships, coordinating the effort. I was on the ship from Terazed, and Tyr was on the Nietzscheans' flagship. I still can't remember what exactly happened during that battle. I had nightmares for weeks afterward, just woke up screaming that everyone had died and left me-
"I'd rather not go into it. Suffice it to say that we had a hell of a time recovering."
Beka bit her lip as she realized something. "I'm sorry. You wanted to hear about Tyr and me, not about this. Should I go back to the beginning?"
"Just a little."
"After the first encounter with the Worldship, we stopped at Pierpont Drift. I don't know if you remember Dad's police reports, but he mentioned Schroedinger's Cat."
"I think I heard of him. Come on, Rocket, of course I do!" Rafe leaned forward. "Bordeaux Crown of Holyoke in a beer barrel."
"His real name's Leydon Bryce-Hawkins, and he admired the Valentine Music Labyrinth. Anyway, we got a little involved and," she paused to decide how to phrase it, "well, have you ever seen a green Nietzschean?"
Rafe was amused. "He didn't take it well?"
"Hardly. He-"
"Tried to choke him, but didn't get enough time to before security arrived," Tyr finished easily. Neither sibling had heard him enter, and now he moved further into the room, lifting her off her chair and sitting down on it, holding her on his lap with one arm. "The ship's on autopilot. I got tired of waiting for you to take your turn, so I came back here to see what you were talking about."
"Tyr!" Beka twisted, trying to get loose, but his hold around her waist was firm. "Why did you do that?"
"Because a pregnant woman should have a softer seat than that chair."
She faced him and grinned coquettishly. "You're going to spoil me, you know. How am I going to survive after the baby comes?"
"We'll figure something out," he promised, pressing his lips against her own. She slid a hand along his jaw as he deepened the kiss.
They heard Rafe cough. Beka turned to see him studying the ceiling. "I get the hint. Where was I?"
"Schroedinger's Cat."
"Right. After Tyr's color-changing episode- ah!" She arched backward as Tyr ran his finger up along her spine. "Don't do that!"
"Don't mention Pierpont."
"I can always find another seat."
"I won't let you."
"Tyr..." Beka saw Rafe's face, impatience obvious. "Okay, okay, after Pierpont. We started to spend more time together, so much that even Rev began to comment. After he made me dinner one night, well... we didn't go back." She smiled, remembering. "We got married six months after Pierpont. Rev oversaw the ceremony- it was only a few weeks before he left. Dylan gave us the entire week off, and I don't think we ever left our cabin.
"Tyr, naturally, wanted to try for kids right away-"
"Somehow I don't think I need to hear this," Rafe interrupted hastily.
"Relax, I'm not going to go into more detail." She laughed silently at her brother's nervous fidgeting. "I managed to talk him back to after we defeated the Worldship. I told you about that. I stopped taking birth control immediately after that. We just figured we'd let it go and see what happened." She fell silent, cursing herself for that stupid oversight.
"So that's the entire story?"
"No, it isn't." Beka leaned back against Tyr, and he moved both hands to cover her stomach. She spread her fingers on the table and studied them, so she wouldn't have to look Rafe in the face. Numbly, she said, "I completely forgot to tell Trance or Rommie. I conceived after two months, but the signs were so flu-like that that's what Trance diagnosed. I wasn't sure, so I took the medicine she gave me." She swallowed, trying to get rid of the lump in her throat. "Between the medicine and the fact that Tyr's Nietzschean, I have a thirty-five percent chance of miscarriage or early labor."
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