Page 35 of Naughty List Delivery
Behind me, Ober shifts slightly, and I feel his alien heat intensify. His enhanced senses are working overtime, cataloging every detail of our prison while calculating odds that probably don’t favor anyone in this room.
“The choice you gave Sera was accept your crimes or lose her children,” I say, memory and rage sharpening my voice to a blade. “She chose to protect them from growing up thinking family separation was normal business. That’s not the same mathematics.”
“Isn’t it?” Krax’s black eyes reflect satisfaction like oil on water. “You decided abstract principles were worth more than concrete relationships. That hypothetical future victims mattered more than my actual daughters. Now you get to make the same choice—abstract morality versus specific lives, principle versus people, conscience versus love.”
The communication array crackles with Mother’s voice again: “All stations, be advised—we’ve got forty-seven civilians in immediate danger and unknown structural integrity on the target vessel. Prepare for precision extraction operations. Authorization Omega Seven Seven.”
Omega Seven Seven. I’ve never heard that code before, but Ober’s tail tightens around my ankle in a rhythm that suggests he recognizes it. Something serious enough that Mother’s willing to risk everything, authorization from high enough up the chain that she can ignore normal diplomatic protocols.
But Krax’s smile suggests he was expecting exactly this kind of response.
“Attention rescue fleet,” he announces, moving to secondary controls that probably do exactly what I’m afraid they do.“Any attempt to board this vessel will result in immediate decompression of all three family sections. Your choice: watch from a safe distance while Nova and Ober demonstrate the true cost of moral evolution, or be responsible for forty-seven deaths by trying to play hero.”
The countdown displays suddenly flicker to life throughout the bay, showing three minutes in stark red numerals that begin ticking downward immediately. Three minutes to choose which families live and which die. Three minutes to prove that conscience is just another word for selective murder.
Around us, forty-seven families wait for salvation that might cost them everything, their Christmas clothes now serving as potential funeral shrouds for dreams that were supposed to come true yesterday. But as the countdown begins and Krax prepares to force us into an impossible choice, I feel something fundamental shift between Ober and me.
His alien warmth seeps through my jacket as he positions himself to shield me from multiple angles, his enhanced senses cataloging every detail of our prison while his presence reminds me that some partnerships are worth any price. Some promises matter more than survival. Some deliveries are too important to fail.
“Three minutes,” I murmur, studying the energy barriers and calculating impossible odds.
“Three minutes,” he agrees, his tail tightening around my ankle in a rhythm that spells tactical coordinates and desperate affection against my skin.
Vex’s attention keeps drifting to the children in Section B, his phosphorescent patterns flickering with what might be conscience fighting against loyalty. Behind his elegant features, something is cracking—perhaps some remaining piece of the person he was before revenge consumed his brother and made monsters of them both.
The countdown continues, and with it, the most crucial mission of our lives. Because this Christmas, we’re not just delivering packages.
We’re delivering hope itself. Even if we have to choose who lives to receive it.
Even if it kills us.
Even if it kills them.
10
The Space Between Heartbeats
Noomi
Thethree-minutecountdownfeelslike a lifetime compressed into agony.
Krax stands on his platform like a conductor preparing for his final symphony, his phosphorescent circulatory system pulsing with anticipation while forty-seven families huddle in their designated sections, waiting for someone to save Christmas or destroy it completely. The energy barriers hum with lethal promise between us and the people we’ve sworn to protect, and every second that ticks by brings us closer to a choice between our lives and theirs.
Twelve alien guards remain positioned around the bay’s perimeter, their weapons trained not on us but on the blast doors—Krax’s insurance that Mother’s rescue team won’t breach his carefully orchestrated demonstration. Two more guards flank the main control console where Vex works, their plasma rifles held at ready position, but their attention split between us and the families behind the energy barriers. I can see the uncertainty in their postures, the way they keep glancing between their leader’s growing instability and the sobbing children who remind them of siblings, offspring, clutch-mates they left behind on distant worlds.
“Two minutes, thirty seconds,” Krax announces with theatrical precision, his voice carrying across the bay like a death sentence wrapped in silk. “I do hope your fleet appreciates the educational value of what they’re about to witness.”
Beside me, Ober’s heat radiates controlled tension, but I can feel the change beginning in his body chemistry—the subtle shift in pheromones that means a predator is deciding whether to hunt or protect. His enhanced senses catalog everything with military precision: guard positions mapped to the centimeter, energy flow patterns analyzed for weaknesses, the distance between us and the families calculated down to exact step counts and lung capacity requirements.
His tail wraps around my ankle in what looks like comfort but spells out tactical coordinates against my skin with the deliberate pressure of someone who’s spent years communicating in hostile territory: Console twelve meters northeast. Six seconds sprint if you move when guards rotate. Vex alone for three heartbeats during shift change.
But there are no good options. Even if we could reach the controls, even if we could somehow disable the energy barriers, the detonation charges Krax showed us would turn this entire bay into expanding plasma before we could evacuate more than a handful of people. The mathematics of rescue are brutal when measured against the physics of contained explosions and the simple reality that love doesn’t make you faster than light.
Across the bay, the little human girl in Section B has stopped crying loud enough to wake the dead and started the quiet, exhausted sobbing of someone who’s run out of hope. She sits beside a woman who must be her grandmother, both of them holding each other while tears track down their faces like slow-motion waterfalls in the bay’s artificial gravity.
“Grandmama,” the child whispers, her voice carrying in the unnatural quiet that’s settled over the families like a shroud. “I want to go home. I want Mama and Papa. I want Christmas morning.”
“I know, little star,” the grandmother replies, her voice breaking with the effort to maintain hope she probably stopped feeling hours ago. “I know. Maybe... maybe the nice people will help us. Maybe Christmas will still come.”
