25

- Cori'ax -

It was worse than he'd feared.

The shuttle had located Charlotte's Earth-made dropship right where he had hoped it wouldn't be. Right in the center of the spot where the clouds of smoke would gather and where the firebirds would seek their richest harvest of newly-born prey animals. Right in the vortex of the insane thunderstorms, right where the adolescent firebirds would frolic to relish the giant forces of nature, showing each other and themselves that they weren't afraid of the lightning.

Because there was a lot of lightning down there now, and Charlotte's craft was right in the middle of it.

The old Acerex dropship creaked and rattled on the way down through the atmosphere, but the air was calm. That was the eeriest thing about the weather on the Fire Planet – there could be major thunder and lightning, but the 'storm' part was missing. The air would be as calm and placid as a glass of water, and at the same time so thick with electricity that it would feel like moving through jelly.

He could see her shuttle now, brightly illuminated by the bolts of lightning that would strike many times a second in a huge area around it, as if it were a hailstorm of pure electricity.

He shuddered again, this time not for himself, but for the thought of Charlotte alone inside that dropship. Well, it was a sturdy craft, and hopefully it was holding up against the onslaught of the thunderbolts.

He set the shuttle down beside hers, hurried to the hatch and drew his sword. Scouting out the windows he could only see endless, blindingly white lightning hitting the ground all around him, and he knew he'd need a lot of luck to even survive the six steps that he'd need to get from his own shuttle to hers. And even then, he somehow had to get inside it.

He opened the hatch manually. This primitive shuttle was made with thin materials, and probably it wouldn't attract the lightning too much.

Then he felt his spirits sink when the smell of the Fire Planet released all kinds of terrible imagery in his mind.

Again he saw Retia'rek getting too close to the Fire and screaming in terror when he realized that he was trapped.

Himself going to get Retia'rek and being burned, but not realizing it until an hour later when most of his face came off in his hand as a dead piece of charcoal.

The hergs stalking them and pouncing at unpredictable times.

The final hopelessness in Retia'rek's exhausted, sobbing scream when the hergs finally got him and tore him to shreds.

The firebird swooping casually down and biting off one of Borian'ex's arms, then dropping it to the ground in a supreme display of contempt before another one did the same with his head.

His intense guilt and depression when the Trials were over and everyone but him was dead.

Now he was shaking in a way he hadn't since the last time he was here. Every fiber of his being told him to leave. This was death for him, and he knew it only too well. The planet didn't get him last time, but now he was giving it another chance, and he was sure that Bosh couldn't fail twice.

But Charlotte was right over there.

He jumped down on the ground and ran without thinking. A single lightning bolt would kill him if it hit.

He slapped the side of the Earth craft with the flat of his hand. “Charlotte! Mahan!”

He heard sudden movement inside the dropship, and then the mechanism in the door cycled and he tore it open, sword ready in his hand.

The sight froze him. Charlotte was kneeling on the floor, so pale and naked that the breath caught in his throat. She only had on some kind of thin sheet, and it had dark stains that looked so much like blood it couldn't be anything else.

And in her arms ...

He was able to get into the dropship and close the hatch behind him before his legs buckled and he fell to his knees in front of her. The little bundle in her arms was red and slimy, small and wrinkled, and it looked so little like a human that he knew it had to be dead.

He reached out and touched Charlotte's hand with fingers that were trembling uncontrollably. He couldn't breathe.

Then she looked up at him, and to his astonishment there was no grief in her eyes, just light. “I'm glad you're here.”

“I ... I don't ...” His voice failed him. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry, that this was not the way things should have been, that she was the best warrior he'd known and that he had failed her.

She smiled. “Because I was just going to name her. I'm thinking Elerea Blaze. You like?”

There was a hard clang as his sword dropped from his stiff fingers and hit the metal floor. “But ... she's ...”

There was a tiny little sound from the bundle in Charlotte's arms, a little mewling sound much like that of a vrei pup.

Charlotte chuckled. “Yeah, she was asleep. Can you imagine? How can she sleep in this noise, just minutes after she was born? I tell you, she's a tough little cookie.”

The tiny little fingers were definitely moving now, and the impossibly small mouth made sucking motions.

“But she's so small,” Cori'ax whispered. “How can she be ... alive?”

Charlotte lifted her eyebrows. “Hey, have you seen my pussy? You think I could squeeze something bigger than this out of there? Oh, right. You've never seen a newborn before. Yeah, this is the right size, even for a half-Acerex girl. She'll grow fast, though. You want to touch her? Come on, she won't bite. No teeth.”

He felt his jaw drop in the purest wonder he'd ever felt, and again it was like standing beside himself. He slowly reached one finger out and touched the tiny baby's hand. It was soft and warm and impossibly small compared to his. “This is ... extraordinary ... But ... is everything okay? I mean, she's fine? You're fine? Oh Spirits, are you okay, my love and Mahan?”

Charlotte shrugged and adjusted the cloth that she'd wrapped the baby in. “You know, I'm pretty high on some really cool meds, and I'm here on the damn Fire Planet, but I am holding my new daughter in my arms. So yeah, I think I'm okay. Hey, I clamped the umbilical, but I can't find anything to cut it with. You want to put that sword of yours to better use than you ever have before?”

He picked it up again and followed Charlotte's instructions, carefully slicing over the strange, long piece of tissue that still connected mother and child.

Charlotte held Elerea Blaze close, then reached out to Cori'ax with one hand and grasped his wrist. “I'm really glad you're here. Because this ship is pretty much dead. And when these drugs wear off, I'm probably gonna panic pretty hard when I realize where I am. Meanwhile, did I hear you say 'Mahan'?”

Her brown eyes were so full of life and goodness that he marveled that he could ever have doubted that she was his fated mate.

“You did. And you are. Some of us are just too stupid for our own good. It doesn't change anything. You're under no obligation to do anything or to change your opinion about me. I'm sure that opinion can't be high. I don't expect that you'll want anything to do with me after this. And I will not bother you.”

She squeezed his arm. “I've never heard you babble before, Cori'ax. It's cute. All I know is that you're here now and that I never want you to leave me. Or our child. Want to hold her, now that you've woken her up? I think it's okay. I did breastfeed her a little right before you got here.”

He gingerly accepted the tiny, but surprisingly heavy and compact bundle into his arms and looked into his daughter's eyes.

“Our child,” he repeated, too awestruck and overwhelmed to come up with a thought of his own. And she plainly was – one eye was Charlotte's dark brown, and the other was his own bright yellow. It was the most incredible sight he'd seen. This baby was so obviously a mix of him and of Charlotte, the woman he loved, his fated mate, his Mahan. He had never been happier or more complete. There was something defiant in the way his daughter displayed her mixed ancestry from the moment she would look at anyone. She could not disguise her origin. He loved it. It was warrior-like.

He had no idea how long he was standing there, transfixed, just taking her in, becoming a father. Her father. He'd never thought he would be anyone's father. But here he was. And he would do his best to be a good one. This little one was tough. Sleeping peacefully here? Incredible!

His child. His daughter ...

“There's a box of tissues right over there,” Charlotte said mildly. “Those eyes of hers aren't that common, by the way. Most people have eyes the same color, not different ones. There's a name for it, but I don't recall it right now. Pretty cool, though. Cori'ax, I hate to interrupt. But we should probably get off this damn planet.”

He gently gave the girl back, wiped his face with a couple of tissues and looked out. The lightning had subsided and moved on, and the sounds of thunder were growing weaker. Maybe it was over. But he'd fought enough battles to know that hopes like that were pretty futile and he should expect the worst.

The worst? He peered up at the sky, which was still dark. He thought he could see some movement up there. And now that the sound of thunder was growing more distant, he was pretty sure there were some screams in the air. Screams that he had heard before, many years ago, a sound that almost always meant that someone would die: firebirds.

Yes, that was the worst. “Can we get this craft to fly?”

Charlotte shook her head. “I tried pushing some buttons and waking up the essential systems right before you came here. There's nothing. No life at all. Totally dead. That first lightning bolt must have fried everything in here. Stars, you wouldn't believe the static electricity in the air right after! Everything was shooting sparks. But no. This thing will never fly again. How about yours?”

He nodded. Pressing his nose to the window, he could see that the shuttle he had arrived in still had position lights active, and he could just about make out the glow from the instruments.

“I think it still works.”

Charlotte was gently rocking her new daughter in her arms, and Cori'ax had to suppress a smile. That was clearly an intuitive thing she was doing, so far removed from the hard nosed and battle-toughened pilot he knew her as. But she looked great doing it. It looked right.

“Okay,” she said. “How important is it that we leave right now? We could wait for daylight. I suppose we could even contact Gideo Station with the radio on your shuttle once the static subsides. That thunderstorm is moving away.”

Cori'ax stared out the windows, looking up. One firebird finding them and deciding that it wanted human for supper was enough to ruin any plan they had. “Depends. The most obvious danger is over. But there is no such thing as safety on this planet, my love.”

“That's true. But how dangerous would it be for us to run across those handful of yards and throw ourselves into the other shuttle, then take off and hit the gas?”

He stood still for several minutes, just looking. There was definitely movement up there. It was hard to tell what it was, but it was like a slightly lighter shadow against a dark sky. “Dangerous,” he said at last. “There's at least one firebird up there. And it's very interested in us.”

“Shit. Firebird? Like the dragon Harper told us about? Complete with breathing fire and everything?”

“Yes.”

“Hers didn't seem so bad. I mean, it helped her and Vrax'ton, as I recall. After it tried to abduct her.”

He sighed. “Firebirds are bad. I can't explain the one she and King Vrax'ton met. I just know that I saw two boys being killed by them, and I heard of many more. None of the stories are good. Firebirds kill in nasty ways.”

Charlotte looked down at her baby. “So should we just stay? I'm not inclined to take any risks right now.”

Before she had finished talking, a penetrating, deafening shriek pierced the silence, and the whole craft rocked on its skids. And outside the window there was suddenly a luminous eye the size of a head. A firebird was looking in.

Cori'ax's hand reflexively went to his sword, and he placed himself between the eye and Charlotte. “He knows there's someone in here now,” he seethed, frustration and fear clouding his mind as he stared defiantly into the eye. “And he would only make a noise like that if he wants others to join him. He wants to show them what he's found. He wants to play. We have to go before his friends get here.”

“Oh damn. Look!” Charlotte was pointing up to the ceiling of the cabin. The imprints of the firebird's talons could be seen as they easily bent the metal inwards from the outside.

There was no time to lose. Cori'ax opened the hatch and felt the intense smell of the Fire Planet fill his consciousness again, but this time he didn't care about the past. Only the present mattered. “We have to go right now.”

Charlotte looked at him, and there was such fear on her face that he felt the first stirrings of anger at anyone who would make her feel that. “Do I have time to change?”

She still only had on the thin-looking blood-stained sheet.

Another scream pierced the air, and it was answered by another from not too far away. Cori'ax clenched the hilt of his sword. “No.”

Charlotte was a soldier and understood urgency. She wrapped the baby in her own flight suit and came up to him, looking over towards the other shuttle. “Not too far. What's the plan?”

“I distract it while you run over there, start the shuttle and get going. It's in Ready mode. The engines are warm and it will take you twelve seconds to take off from the moment you press the button. Use the Emergency Escape mode on the autopilot.”

She frowned. “That will make the whole thing jump a hundred feet into the air. You have to be inside by then, too, or we'll leave you behind.”

He looked into her warm, worried eyes and placed one hand on the side of her head, relishing the warmth and the silky feel of her hair. It was the last time he would see her. “I can only say I'm sorry I didn't realize you're my Mahan until it was too late.”

She pulled away from him. “Shit, you're planning to die here, aren't you?”

He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. “My love, I've never felt less of a deathwish than right now. I'll try to make it. But there's a good chance I won't. We both know that. If that firebird can do that to this armored craft, then it can crumble the other one up like a piece of paper. I have to make sure it's too busy to even try. Before that, I just have to know: will you marry me?”

He was taken by surprise by his own question. This was not the best time. But why not? It was his last chance. It wasn't like he'd ever be able to actually marry her; he'd be too dead.

Charlotte just stared at him.

Then she got up on tiptoe and kissed him right on the mouth. “Yes, of course I will. I love you.”

He felt his face break up into a smile, and the joy flooded his senses. He had never been happier. “And I love you. Both of you.”

He allowed himself a second to stroke his little baby girl over her tiny head and tenderly kiss her forehead.

Then he jumped out and stood on the ground of the Fire Planet for the last time.