Epilogue
Starr
Two solar rotations later
“How do I look?” Darq adjusted his kel for the third time.
Torg shrugged. “The same as always.”
I shot him a censuring look and reassured Darq. “Very handsome.” Seated on a high-backed divan, I shifted position and stretched out my legs. Getting comfortable was hard these days, but the baby would be born soon.
“You don’t think I should wear Terran garments?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. The women are coming to meet an alien man. They’ll expect you to look as Dakonian as possible. Brush your hair back. Show off your horns. They’ll love that.”
Darq peered into the mirror I’d received in the last shipment of supplies and finger-combed his hair.
“Perfect.” I flashed a thumbs-up.
“I shouldn’t take the snow skimmer, then.”
Dakonians no longer had to trek on foot—not since Andrea and I had renegotiated the exchange program. We had Enoki inform Earth that since they’d seen fit to allow a dangerous criminal to be sent to Dakon, the shipment of illuvian ore would halt unless certain conditions were met. First, they had to stop sending convicts and open the program to all women. Second. A little reconstruction was in order. They had to bring the planet up to the present age. In the past year, fleets of ships had delivered supplies. But no women until today. It had taken time to retool the recruitment procedure.
This new group of women would arrive on a much different Dakon than the one Andrea, Tessa, and I had landed on. I still missed the woman I’d thought Tessa was. In the lodge when we’d announced Loka had been killed, for the briefest second, I imagined I’d seen a glint of regret in her eyes, but I knew better. There was only cold and darkness. You couldn’t assassinate as many people as she had and retain your humanity. Murder killed both victim and perpetrator. The former lost his life, the latter his soul. Two years had passed since our arrival, and I’d taken to thinking of Tessa as two people because it was easier that way. There’d been our bubbly, cheerful shipmate, and there’d been the cold-eyed killer—who’d gone back to Terra to be convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
I’d learned from Maridelle, with whom I had frequent vid contact, that in its own inept way, my former government had attempted to protect me. The hit had been ordered long before I left Terra. The murder charges and subsequent trial had been a farce, concocted by my government so they could send me out of reach of the Carmichaels.
We all knew how that had worked out.
The one hundred women soon to arrive had been vetted stringently. I’d written the screening procedures myself, and Andrea had hacked into the exchange program’s recruitment protocols and planted them. One of the new arrivals would be Darq’s mate. He’d drawn a chit.
“She’ll prefer to ride by skimmer,” I advised him. “Your female is coming for a Dakonian man, not a two tripta hike in the snow.”
“Oh.”
“Everything will be fine. You’ll do great.”
“Go already!” Torg yelled.
“Torg!”
“No, he’s right.” Darq straightened. “I will see you later. When I return, it will be with my mate.” He hurried from the cave.
“You were rather rude,” I chided Torg. “He’s nervous about the meeting—as I’m sure you were.”
“Maybe a little,” he admitted. “But I wanted to be alone with you and Starlet.” He rubbed my swollen belly.
I, and many of the first arrivals—including Andrea—had proven definitively that Dakonians and Terrans were compatible and could reproduce. Andrea’s baby would be born a month after ours. With as often as Torg and I had sex, I would have been pregnant a lot sooner, except for the contraceptive implant. Something else my former government had failed to plan for. More than three-quarters of the first arrivals were on birth control. After promising compatible, fertile mates, Earth had sent a group of women who couldn’t bear children—at least not for a while. Without the tool to remove the implant, we had to wait for its efficacy to wear off. Andrea and I leveraged that little oversight in our negotiations, too.
“We can’t call our daughter Starlet.” We’d had many discussions but had not yet arrived at an agreement.
“Why not? Your name is Starr; she’ll be our little star.”
“No.” I shook my head.
“We could call her Icha, then,” he said with a straight face.
I punched his arm lightly. “Don’t you even—”
He laughed, and I did, too. My nemesis no longer represented a threat to me or anyone else. I learned that Tessa had told Icha of my conviction so word would spread, Torg’s tribe would expel me, and I’d be forced out into the open. Time had taken care of Icha. She’d lost power as more and more couples gave birth to babies and program opponents decided they preferred a full-time Terran female over a once-in-a-while kel-warmer troublemaker.
I teased Torg, but he would get his way. The name Starlet had grown on me, and anything that made my mate happy, made me happy. I was pleased to have a healthy baby—and a real medical center nearby for the birth of my first child.
One whole shipment of insulated pre-fab housing panels had been used to construct a medical center. Another shipment had provided bio scanners, robo operators, osteoknitters, and other medical devices. Earth physicians and medical technicians provided consultation and training for the Dakonian healers.
I intended to have a home cave birth with Stovak attending, but having the medical center on standby and the skimmer to get there reassured me. It was at the med facility we’d learned the sex of our child. We’d considered waiting to find out in the time-honored manner, but since females were so important to the future, we decided we wanted to know.
Torg’s expression turned serious. “Do you mind still living in the cave?”
Many Dakonians had moved into the pre-fab housing units. They were well insulated against draft and dampness and came with all the conveniences and comforts.
“No, it’s your home. Our home,” I amended. And it had been modified quite a bit. A composite material had been laid over the dirt floor. Space heaters fueled by energy packs warmed the chambers, although we supplemented with wood for atmosphere. I’d gotten used to having a roaring fire. Somewhere on Terra—maybe an antique shop—several woodstoves had been located and shipped to us. We built our fires in those, eliminating the smoke and soot. I owed Andrea for that one. She could find anything. She could locate a single tick in a herd of kel. If kel got ticks; I suspected it was too cold. One day, the Terrans would wake up to discover that half of everything they owned had been mysteriously transported to Dakon.
“Do you mind the way the cave has changed?” I asked him. It didn’t look Dakonian anymore.
I’d furnished it as a Terran home with sofas, a huge massaging hover bed, lamps, artwork, and a full kitchen complete with a flash cooker, although I did none of the cooking. Torg and Darq took care of that. But hey, I wanted to make their lives easier.
“No.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m humbled by what you’ve done for us. I did not think I would see this kind of progress in my lifetime. Before you came, we faced extinction. You, Andrea, and the other females gave us more than we could have dreamed of.”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “Enoki has decided we should search for others, to see if descendants of asteroid survivors live on the other side of Dakon. Before, the warm season didn’t last long enough for us to go on foot, but now we can travel in the vehicles. A team has volunteered to go.”
“That’s great news.” I knew Torg and his brethren longed to reunite all their people.
He hugged me close to his warm body and rubbed my tummy. “We’re going to call our daughter Starlet, right?”
“We’ll see.” I settled my head on his shoulder, reached up, and caressed his horns. He growled, and I giggled.
Starlet, I can’t wait for you to meet your Daddy. I cuddled next to my alien mate and sighed with contentment.
The End