Page 1 of The First Child
CHAPTER 1
HADA
The message waitsfor me like a loaded weapon.
I stare at the communication terminal in my quarters, the priority seal blinking red against the standard-issue gray walls. Three days of deep-space transit, and command finally decides to patch through whatever news couldn’t wait until my return to Earth. The seal readsPersonal - Immediate Response Required, which means someone I care about is either dead or in enough trouble to qualify.
My hands shake as I break the encryption. Not from fear—I buried that reflex years ago in the outer rim campaigns. This is caffeine withdrawal and too many sleepless shifts monitoring sensor arrays for phantom Korvani raiders that never materialized.
The hologram that springs to life isn’t a superior officer or a medical examiner. It’s Janet Mehock, looking older than her forty-three years and wearing the kind of expression that announces bad news before words ever form.
“Hada.” Her voice carries across the light-years like a prayer. “I’m sorry to be the one telling you this.”
My stomach drops.
“Margot Altell died in a transport accident three days ago. System failure during atmospheric entry on Kepler Station. She and her partner, both gone instantly.”
Margot. My throat closes around her name. I knew this call would come eventually—deep space logistics has a way of killing the people you care about—but knowing doesn’t soften the blow. Margot Altell, who saved my life in the Jakarta raids. Margot, who talked me through my first panic attack after the bombing on Titan Station. Margot, who sent me photos of her baby daughter every few weeks like clockwork, grinning beside a tiny face that looked nothing like her mother’s human features.
Janet’s hologram continues talking, but the words blur together until one phrase snaps my attention back.
“—named you as legal guardian.”
“What?”
“Aniska Altell. Margot’s daughter. You’re listed as the designated guardian in her military service record.” Janet’s image flickers, the long-distance transmission wavering. “The child is currently on New Eden Colony, where Margot was stationed. You’ll need to?—”
I cut the transmission.
The silence in my quarters feels thick enough to drown in. Margot is dead. The woman who dragged me out of my own wreckage more times than I can count, who somehow foundlove and happiness in this godforsaken galaxy, is gone. And she left me her baby.
A baby I’ve never met. A half-Zephyrian child born into a universe that barely knows what to do with interspecies relationships, let alone their offspring.
I sit there for maybe ten minutes, staring at the blank terminal screen, before muscle memory kicks in. Pack light. Check transport schedules. File the necessary leave paperwork. Move forward because standing still means drowning in the kind of thoughts that got three good soldiers killed on Hestia Prime.
The transitto New Eden takes four days. Four days to read Margot’s service file, study the colony reports, and pretend I have any idea what the hell I’m doing. The files tell me Aniska is six months old, born healthy despite the complications that come with her mixed heritage. There are medical reports I don’t understand, cultural briefings that raise more questions than they answer, and a single video message Margot recorded for me just after the birth.
I watch it once and delete it immediately. Some grief is too raw to revisit at thirty thousand feet above a planet I’ve never seen.
New Eden sprawls across the screen as we descend—a patchwork of human engineering and Zephyrian bio-architecture that somehow works together without looking like a compromise. The settlement is larger than I expected, more established. Permanent structures instead of prefab shelters. Gardens instead of survival rations. People who chose to build something instead of just survive.
The transport touches down at midday local time, and the gravity of the colony hits differently than ship-standard. Heavier. More real. I shoulder my single duffel bag and follow the other passengers through customs, past Zephyrian officials whose bioluminescent markings pulse in patterns I can’t read.
The nursery complex sits in the heart of the civilian district, marked by soft curves and warm lighting that screams “family-friendly” in every architectural detail. I’ve been in combat zones that felt less intimidating than this place.
Inside, the lobby hums with quiet activity. Human and Zephyrian staff move between rooms with the efficient calm of people who know exactly what they’re doing. Behind soundproofed walls, I catch glimpses of children—some fully human, others with the telltale features of mixed heritage though none half-Zephyrian like Aniska. The air smells like cleaning supplies and something sweet I can’t identify.
“Captain Blaxton?”
The voice belongs to a middle-aged Zephyrian female whose silver markings identify her as medical staff. Her English carries the precise diction of a translator implant, each word carefully chosen.
“Dr. Velanni. We spoke over subspace.” Her expression holds the professional sympathy of someone who delivers bad news as part of her job description. “Aniska is in room seven. I should warn you that she’s been…difficultsince the news arrived.”
Difficult. That’s a word with about fifty different meanings when applied to children, none of them good.
Room seven sits at the end of a corridor lined with observation windows. Through the reinforced glass, I see cribs equippedwith monitoring equipment that looks like a cross between medical tech and alien artistry. Most of the rooms are quiet. Room seven sounds like a war zone.
The crying hits me first. Not just the sound, but the feeling. A pressure behind my eyes that makes my sinuses ache and my chest tighten. The nurse beside me winces and adjusts something on her handheld device.
