Page 70 of Taken to Kor
“Oh ontte. Have you located it yet?”
“Ontte, it’s here. Who wants to shoot?”
“Me!”
“Centare, me.”
“Rhork should do it,” Tevbarannos says. “Or Deena.”
“Deena already got to have her fun. Let me.”
“It wasn’t fun for her, it was her kin,” Rhork snarls around at whoever last spoke. More hands come around me, dozens of them, fighting for place as they murmur weak apologizes. I start to laugh with how hard they squeeze until Rhork forcefully bats them all away. “Stop handling my mate like that.” He grabs my shoulders and steers me towards the chairs in the center of the command center while issuing orders to the other navigators to hunt down the scheming Erobu and the fleeing Egama mercenaries. No reason to stop the fun now, I think with a small, sad chuckle.
“Are you alright?” Rhork says to me as he steadies me against the rapid movement of the ship chasing clusters of Egama mercenaries away.
I open my mouth to respond when Gerannu shouts, “Would you all stop firing the incinerators! For shrov’s sakes those are expensive battleships! Destabilize them, then we can use the reverse transporter Nikkowerranorru and I rejigged to pull the ships back onto the mothership. Then we can battle the Egama hand-to-hand!”
Murmured assent crops up all around us, but one voice is slightly louder than the others. Sprinting past my seat, Tevbarannos shouts, “I’m heading to the hangar! I’ll be the first one to bag an Egama.” His knees lock. He looks at me and gets all bashful as he extends his blaster my direction. “Unless, you think bagging the first Egama would make you feel better, Deena?”
I laugh and snort simultaneously, which makes Rhork laugh and Tevbarannos smile. “Centare, I think I’m okay. You go ahead.”
He shrugs and starts towards the doorway while several others grab blasters and brush past him in their effort to get there first. “Alright then, I’ll bring you an Egama head when I come back…”
“You don’t have to do that either!” I roll my eyes, but he doesn’t hear me because he’s still speaking.
“…and a new tunic. Though I don’t have any of the gormar fabric you like.”
“A new tunic? What for?”
“Ontte. For your wet spot. Did you sit on something or did you…” He pauses, then makes a face. “Did you get scared and pee your pants?”
“What?”
“What!” Rhork turns me around in the most embarrassing display ever and lifts up my dress so that the base trails around the backs of my calves. Then hesniffsit. “It has no color, so it isn’t blood and it has no scent so it isn’t piss. What is this? What did you sit in?” He strides over to my chair and curses. “It’s here, too. Gerannu, what sort of malconstruction is this?”
Gerannu balks, “That isn’t mine…” And the two males start arguing about this and other constructions that, in the past have gone wrong — or haven’t. Meanwhile, I palm the space over my ass in concern as I also realize that the liquid coating my butt is drying on the insides of my thighs. And that’s when my brain and belly start to churn.
I gasp. “Shrov the saints!” I grab my stomach and my toes curl and I hallucinate that moment with Mathilda in that house with Pogar all over again. “I’m shot!”
Time stands still, and then throttles forward all at once, with pirates tripping over themselves to arrive at my side. Everyone lifting their weapons in search of the enemy. Pointing their blasters around at each other and everyone accusing everyone of treachery. Rhork arrives at my side and palms my chest and my stomach in a way I’d ordinarily find quite pleasurable, but don’t.
“What is it? Where is it? I don’t see any marks…”
And then Quintenanrret, bless his bawdy, pirate heart, sends a screeching tone blasting through all of our tokens simultaneously. Everybody buckles, including me, and in the brief silence that follows — punctuated only by curses and groans of pain — he shouts, “Let me through!” He starts shoving pirates left and right until he arrives in front of me where he drops to one knee. He presses two hands against the bottom of my stomach and then grins up at me from this strange position of genuflection.
“Deena, you’ve gone into labor.” And then his smile falls and his eyes widen in what can only be described as pure panic. Which isn’t exactly great sincehe’sthe healer. “Deena’s gone into labor!”
“Deena’s gone into labor!”
“She’s what?”
“Labor!”
“What’s that?”
“Babies are coming!”
“Kits?”
