Page 43 of Naughty List Delivery
Children calling to parents, grandparents crying with relief, lovers promising each other that they’ll never take ordinary moments for granted again.
This is why we reformed. This is why we chose to be better than what the universe tried to make us. For moments like these,when love triumphs over vengeance and families get to continue their stories instead of ending them in violence.
Through the command frequency, I hear Mother’s voice coordinating with military precision: “Transport Seven, you’ve got the Yamamoto family and three others from Section B. Destination: Kepler Mining Station, priority delivery. Transport Twelve, Section A evacuees requiring medical support en route. Transport Fifteen, the bonding pairs from Section C—they’ll need ceremonial transport protocols and privacy accommodations.”
Each family accounted for. Each destination confirmed. Each Christmas celebration salvaged from the wreckage of someone else’s revenge. Each love story allowed to continue.
“Captain,” Kex’s voice crackles through my comm again. “All family transports are away and escorted. Christmas packages are secured and will be delivered on original schedule. The broadcast has generated requests from forty-three news services for interviews, and apparently someone on Relmarax Prime has started a fund to build a memorial for this rescue operation.”
A memorial. For saving people instead of killing them. For choosing love over revenge. For proving that Christmas miracles are possible when someone decides they’re worth the cost.
“Decline the interviews,” I manage, though my voice is barely a whisper now. “This isn’t about us. It’s about them. About families who get to go home.”
“Already done, sir. Routed all requests to the families themselves. Let them tell their own stories.”
My crew understands. They’ve always understood. We’re not the heroes of this story—we’re just the people who decided that families mattered more than our own pain, that Christmas was worth saving even when we had to choose conscience over convenience.
“Noomi,” I whisper, my voice failing as blood loss makes consciousness flicker like emergency lighting. “If I don’t—”
“You will,” she says fiercely, but I can smell the salt of tears she’s trying not to shed. “You’re going to live through this because I’m not losing you when I’ve just found you again.”
Around us, the last families board rescue transports while systems continue failing and my blood loss makes consciousness flicker like emergency lighting. The little girl waves at me from her transport’s viewport, her Christmas dress clean and her smile bright with the kind of joy that makes impossible missions worthwhile.
Through the viewports, I can see the transport ships moving away from the dying station, carrying their precious cargo toward homes and celebrations and futures that almost didn’t happen. Forty-seven families who will spend Christmas morning together because we chose to be better than what revenge tried to make us.
Christmas saved. Families reunited. Packages delivered.
My mate’s hand warm in mine as darkness edges my vision and the sound of children’s laughter carries across the void where forty-seven families thought they would die.
The last thing I hear is Luzrak’s voice coordinating final evacuation procedures: “All civilian personnel clear. Medical emergency teams, priority one casualty requires immediate transport to surgical facilities.”
Priority one casualty. That’s me. The protector who couldn’t protect himself but somehow managed to protect everyone else.
If this is how my story ends—bleeding out while Christmas miracles unfold around me, holding the hand of the woman who taught me to choose love over vengeance—then I’ve lived long enough to matter.
But as consciousness fades and my enhanced healing makes one last desperate attempt to keep me alive, I hear Noomi’s voicepromising things I want desperately to live for: partnership and claiming and futures where we save Christmas together every year until the stars burn out.
Maybe that’s worth fighting for.
Maybe that’s worth surviving for.
Maybe—
13
Christmas Day Miracle
Noomi
Themedicalbayhumswith quiet efficiency while Christmas morning unfolds across seventeen star systems, but I can’t focus on anything except the steady rhythm of Ober’s breathing and the way his alien healing factor is slowly, finally, winning its battle against internal trauma that could have killed him.
Eighteen hours since the rescue. Twelve hours since the medical team admitted they weren’t sure his enhanced physiology could repair the damage fast enough. Six hours since I stopped pretending I wasn’t terrified of losing him again after finally admitting I’d never really let him go.
“Tissue regeneration is accelerating exponentially,” the Kytherian medic reports, her scanner humming as it passes over Ober’s torso for the fourth time this morning. “Internal bleeding has completely stopped, organ function is stabilizing rapidly. The enhanced healing factor is remarkable—he should be fully mobile within the next two hours.”
Relief floods through me so powerfully it makes my hands shake. Eighteen hours of watching him pale and still on the medical table, listening to equipment beep warnings about blood pressure and organ function, wondering if I’d spent three years learning to be worthy of redemption only to lose the person who made me want to be better in the first place.
“You hear that?” I tell him, squeezing his hand as his amber eyes focus more clearly than they have since we arrived. His pupils track my movement with predatory precision that makes my stomach flutter with something that isn’t fear. “You’re going to live to annoy me for decades.”
