Turns out, what Gilrack had called a 'bruise' on Rikek was a few broken ribs.
I hadn't believed. I thought I sure as hell would have felt or heard something if I had managed to kick in a guys ribs. And it wasn't like Gilrack could dig out the messed up body and point to one of the myriad of mashed up somethings and say, 'you did that' as proof.
However, Urish came to me during my first foray into the world outside my nest and babies and whispered about the broken ribs to me with nothing short of aw, asking if he could test out the strength of my legs sometime against targets and whatnot. I shrugged and said sure, even though I was pretty certain hysterical strength had something to do with it. I definitely had the 'hysterical' going on when I had a Rikek above me trying to do the nameless and my babies shrieking bloody murder.
Gilrack seemed pleased with my decision to continue my muscle training, if for nothing else than to get me out of the nest. Something about my health, though he said he'd be happier if he could get me out of the caverns and into some sunshine. Thus, every other day, he coaxed me out for a flight into the outside world, where'd he find a perch for me somewhere on the mountain above the haze of argon and hand me snacks as though he were trying to fatten me up in the process. Probably was. A skinny female was seen as underfed or sickly. A well fleshed out female was seen as healthy and well cared for. A completely obese female, though, was seen pretty much the same as humans were: a lazy glutton. But having only seen one of those so far, I wasn't too worried about becoming one of those, seeing as I wasn't lazy or a glutton and the food they had on Vetas didn't have the 'supersize me' qualities that Earth food could have.
On one of these forays, I managed to convince, well...convince wasn't quite the right word. More like I just ignored Gilrack fretting and just walked into the haze of argon for an experiment. I was feeling daring and, should my hypothesis be wrong, all Gilrack had to do was hang me upside down for a bit until I'd breathed out all the argon.
But, sure enough, I was a few meters in to the denseness of the forest without so much as a light head. I could breathe just fine, even better in a way than half-way up the mountain where the air was thin and cold.
Gilrack wasn't nearly as excited as me. Not until I proved to him by pushing him into the dirt and having my way with him out in the open that I truly had gained the ability to breathe argon.
I included this in my report when I managed to make it to the life pod on one of my 'mental health' excursions away from the nest. It had been four weeks since the hatching of the babies and I was overdue giving Levi and Naomi the announcement.
An unknown male voice picked up my call.
"What is your name and identification number?" buzzed the speaker.
I blanked for several seconds, both because it had been awhile since someone had spoken my language so clearly and also because I had to scramble through my memory for my identification number.
"Uh...Jolene McKanan, and I'm the only human on Vetas so my number is pointless?"
"Identification number?"
"Ugh, something 3567, I didn't call for you anyway. Where's Levi or Naomi?"
"I'm sorry, I have to follow procedure. It could be—hey--!!"
A brief tussel of what sounded like sleeves and shouts, and then Levi's voice filled the speaker.
"Jo?"
"Levi!" I chirped with all the happiness I could convey. "I've missed the crap out of you!"
"Speak for yourself, what took you so long? If it weren't for your tracker—"
"I'm not dead."
"Well, obviously."
In the background I heard the new voice protesting loudly to a murmuring of several others.
"So you have friends?" I asked.
"No," Levi almost growled. "Forget them, the kids?"
"Yeah! I have babies!"
The murmuring in the background went dead silent.
"Oh really?" there was a touch of amusement in his voice.
"Yeah! Two girls and one boy, and they're so darn freaking cute, they don't look like freaky mutants at all! Well, except their legs are kinda, you know, T-rexy shaped, but they still got them little toes and fingers and littles nose and the softest dark hair, oh my gosh, I want you to hold them. Why aren't you here? You should come down right now and hold my babies."
Gilrack, who was standing guard by the closed shuttle doors, sent a wobbly mindwave of uncertainty towards me. Only his parents had been allowed to hold the babies so far and it would be another month before his instincts would let the babies leave the nest for more than a few minutes, and even then only to the royal hall below since it was high enough for 'clean' air.
"Well, in a month you can hold my babies," I said. "They got all these instincts that hoard up their babies in their nests for a while to keep them safe and in argon free air—oh! Which reminds me, I can breathe argon now!"
"No shit?"
"Yes shit! Apparently, there's something in the blood of the animals down here that if you eat over a period of time gives you that ability! Got eat some pretty lightly cooked meat, though. I probably have, like, so many alien tapeworms that I don't know of yet, but hey! I feel pretty great and I can be Tarzan in the jungle, so I ain't complaining. Don't you want to be Tarzan? Of course you want to be Tarzan."
"Slow down, Jo, you keep breaking into those weird clicks."
"Shit, what didn't you get?"
"Something about eating something?"
"Meat. Bloody meat. Cooked enough to crisp on the outside, but bloody on the inside."
"I could do with some rare steak—oy!"
Levi was shoved aside and yet another voice, this one a lower female voice that could have been male got on.
"Ms. McKanan, I'm obligated to remind you that you are still under the employ of Star Craft Cooperated and are overdue for several reports—"
"Yeah, fuck you, I was talking to Levi. Shoo."
The woman gave a closed mouth squawk of indignation even as Levi cackled.
"Gawd, I missed you," I heard him say. "If what you said is true I might as well jiggy down. The station's gotten too crowded for my taste, and I hate 'em all."
"Did they toss out your moonshine?"
"You know it. Bastards."
"Mr. Blau---!"
"Nope. It's my phone call. Not feeling guilty."
"This is Star Craft's equipment—"
"Yeah, sure," I heard another indignant squawk that verified that this new person was indeed female before Levi's voice filled the majority of the speaker again. "I'll give you the honor of listening in, but you got to shut up, Granny. So, Jo, tell me 'bout these babies of yours. Was it hella weird watching them hatch from eggs?"
"Hella weird!"
Levi chortled, and the sound was hot cocoa through my ears.
I spent the next hour telling him in detail all about the hatching and the babies themselves, which then bled on to everything I had been up to in the past four months. I'd just gotten into the crazy drama that was Rikek trying to claim me and the throne like some badly written fantasy romance when Naomi finally crashed onto the scene—literally. There was the sound of probably chairs toppling into the background and several people protesting as they were shoved aside.
"Jo? Jo, I'm here, where's the babies?" she cried.
"You missed that episode," said Levi. "No rewinds."
"Like hell! Babies, I want pictures, right now!"
"Oh yeah! I got those," I said, pulling up my tablet and clicking it on.
"You're just now mentioning this?" Levi's voice had pitched hilariously.
"But I just want to send it to you, do I have to send it to whoever is bossing you around right now?"
"That is Star Craft property—" started a distant voice in the background.
"I'm of a mind to just jump out of the window and just cannonball down there," said Levi. "Seriously, I miss this place empty so much, you have no idea. Is the food okay?"
"The food is great!"
"Canonball it is."
"We're going to need permission to use one of the pods," said Naomi. "And you're forgetting about the breathing."
"No I ain't. Jo fixed that."
"Excuse me?"
"Yep!" I chirped. "Just got to eat alien meat like a savage for a while. 'Tis the blood."
"Please speak plainly, and pictures! Babies!"
"She's got three," said Levi.
"I know that!"
"Did anything happen with the fourth egg?" I asked.
"I incubated it just in case, but nope, it's a dud. Rotten and all. There's nothing, Jo, and the scientists swiped it the moment they got here, no permission at all."
"No manners," said Levi. "Taken people's eggs like that."
I laughed, tears budding at the corner of my eyes. It really had been far, far too long.
"I wonder how these people will react to two more divine beings coming down," I said. "Especially a 'dead-eyed' grouch like you, Levi."
"What the fuck does dead eyed mean?"
"They don't have black or even dark brown eyes down here. If someone has black eyes, it means they're dead because their pupils have blown up."
"Well shit, finally I'll look as dead as I feel inside."
The chattering in the background had grown louder.
Naomi made a closed mouth groan of irritation.
"The extras are demanding I send you a report outline and have you fill in all the questions," she said. "There may be a threat or two there about holding you in debt or forcibly sending you back to Earth."
I snorted. "I'd like to see them try. How many are there?"
"Eight. Like the reports said."
"Cute. Tell them they'll get their reports in due time and to calm their tits."
Levi turned around and said, dead flat, "Calm your tits," and Naomi snorted.
I was allowed to chatter to Naomi and Levi about all that had happened and a good mass of all the things I'd been wanting to share with them before I reluctantly had to get down to filling out some of the reports as the threats of the new employees of the station began to grow worse. I only sent the baby pictures to Naomi and Levi's private numbers, though, and Naomi was all teary squeals. Levi just grunted, "Huh, they ain't as freaky as I thought they'd be," and I had to whole heartedly agree with him before he asked, "Is that a tail? Okay, that's weird."
At some point I glanced back at Gilrack to find he had nodded off in a cat-curl bundle while I'd been talking, which made me smile. Poor guy seemed to always be sleep deprived lately. The babies slept better through the night, only getting up every four hours to eat rather than the every two during the day, but ever since Rikek's attack he'd been on edge. Add in increased training and anyone would be exhausted.
A frightening thought occurred to me.
"Guys, you don't think people will try to overrun this planet, do you?"
Levi and Naomi were quiet for a bit.
"Well, it still stinks like hell," said Levi. "You have that going for you."
"And the aliens are terrifying. And poisoned. And big and clawed and all that."
"But that's never stopped people before," I said quietly.
We sat in thought for a bit, disconcerted.
"I haven't done something horribly, have I?" I said at length, my heart in my throat. "I—I should have thought better than to admit being able to breathe argon, huh? I probably should have—should have just—just kept my mouth shut and never talked to you again, huh? Pretended to be dead?"
"Jo, calm down," said Levi lowly.
I heard the slide and click of Gilrack waking and moving from his position by the door.
But the panic was building in my chest and making my vision blur with building tears.
"I didn't just, like, destroy this planet, did? People suck, guys, people suck hard."
"Not everyone does," said Naomi gently. "It's alright, dear, you couldn't do that to yourself and you can't predict the future. You've done nothing wrong, and they'd probably have figured it out soon anyway."
"If this goes to shit it's all that monsters fault anyway," said Levi dryly. "He's the one who came here and egged you, which I still want to kill him for, by the way."
A warm, heavy clawed hand touched my arm.
"Jo?" he murmured.
"Speak of the devil," grumbled Levi.
"Were you ever able to identify the one who killed Josh?" asked Naomi, her voice wavering just a touch.
Now I had a new reason to panic.
"Yes..." I said quietly.
Naomi hummed to herself, and it made me shiver.
"Yet another reason to come down," she said, as though neither Levi or I could hear the murder in her tone.
"Oh yeah, that'll go over swimmingly," said Levi dryly. "Hey natives, I've come to live among you! Just let me murder one of you first, there we go."
"I'll explain myself ahead of time," she said with a sniff.
"And you call me stupid."
"Because you are."
"Well don't include me in your murder schemes. I have dreams, you know. Jo says they have some pretty good fruit and grains there."
"Alien moonshine," I said with a smile.
"You know it."
"I think we've pushed our time as far as we can," said Naomi, with an edge of irritation. "They're threatening to shut down the line forcibly."
"But I sent the reports!"
"Yeah, well, the head of this team is a real control freak," said Levi. "I'd check her ass for a stick if it didn't count as sexual harassment, not like I'd be attracted to a old fat—"
"We'll be going now," said Naomi quickly, cutting off Levi hard. "We'll talk later, yeah? Or maybe we'll just show up. We already have your coordinates."
"No, warn me first, Josh died for a reason," I said sharply.
"Couldn't you give them a heads up, you know, as their queen?" Oh my gosh, I could hear her eyebrows waggling.
"I am no such thing!"
"She is," broke in Gilrack for the first time.
Levi and Naomi made all sorts of noises to that.
"We love you!" crowed Naomi.
"I love you too!" I cried back.
And before Levi could decide on a sarcastic enough good-bye, the light flicked off, showing the call had been forcibly shut down. A blinking reminder on the screen demanded that I hook up my tablet to the console so they could suck up all the data they wanted from it, but I ignored it. They couldn't make me do anything, and everyone knew the first rule of the internet was to not give pictures of your babies to strangers. I mean, come on.
"Are they really coming here?" asked Gilrack, and I couldn't figure out what his mind waves or his tone thought of that.
"If they can. They're a lot like me in that they have nothing to leave behind, either on the station or Earth." I frowned. "But I'm worried about what my people will do once word of your kind get out. Humans...humans can be very greedy."
"I heard about your concerns," he said, stroking my hair and emitting soothing mindwaves. "We'll take it one step at a time. Whatever happens, I'll be here, and so will my family. You're not alone."
I smiled at that. Because I couldn't help remembering my time on Earth and the hours I spent alone in the observation dome, dreaming as though I weren't there at all.
"Yeah. We'll take it on together."
"But we need to get back. The babies will be hungry."
"Crap, you're right!" I ran to the door and punched the pad furiously. "Babies! I'm so sorry!"
Gilrack chortled and scooped me up, silks and all, the moment the doors of the pod opened and carrot-puke scented argon rolled in. No space suit for me this time!
"I love you, kurrlongi. You're so sweet."
"And I love you too, so fly, bitch! Babies!"
"Yes yes," he said, his voice shaking with laughter.
And we were off through the dark blue-green leaves to the murky sky above.
_____________________________________
Next chapter will be the epilogue! As for Author's Notes of randomness, got to eat a grapefruit while my four-year-old narrated (I kept telling him to stop, but he wouldn't). "Spoon. Oh. Squuiiiish! Hee hee, water juice. Grapefruit juice. I drink? Awwww."