What if it wasn’t an accident?

The question popped into Piper’s mind almost as soon as her eyes opened the next morning. She looked around for a moment, unsurprised to find Weston gone. He had duties to which he must attend, and he’d thoughtfully let her sleep. The imprint of his head on the pillow beside hers suggested he hadn’t left her long ago though.

What if it wasn’t an accident?

The question returned to the forefront of her mind, and she struggled to find context for a moment, certain she’d been dreaming about something. The question had followed her into wakefulness.

After a moment of concentrating, she couldn’t recall any dream she might’ve had, but the context came through clearly. What if her near-miss last night hadn’t been an accident? What if her inadvertent exposure to horg root hadn’t been such a coincidence after all? Was it possible someone didn’t want her to have Pippa’s baby?

With the idea buried firmly in her mind, she slid out of bed and paused for a few moments as she tried to organize her thoughts. It soon became clear that she needed to see Gretel. It certainly wasn’t too early to do a DNA test, and that might give her a clue about who was trying to harm her—if it wasn’t all just coincidental. Her thoughts were jumbled as she took a quick shower before sliding into comfortable clothes and leaving the quarters.

It was nerve-racking walking down the hall, feeling like every eye was on her and aware of her thoughts and movements. She couldn’t shake the idea that someone was trying to kill her, and not knowing who it was might be even worse than the fear of it happening. She couldn’t trust anyone, which only increased her fear to the point of outright paranoia. By the time she reached Medical, she was half-convinced an entire cadre of spies was following her.

She shook her head as she stepped inside, knowing she needed to calm down. There was no proof she was even in any kind of danger, and freaking herself out wouldn’t do anything to help her keep a clear mind and sharp eyes if she was under attack.

Gretel came to meet her. “Did we have an appointment this morning?”

Piper shook her head.

“I heard about the accident last night. Were you injured?”

Piper shook her head again. “The beam never touched me, but it got me thinking.” She looked around. “Is there somewhere we could talk a little more privately?”

With a frown that revealed her confusion, Gretel nodded and led Piper into her office, where she closed the panel behind them. Gretel took a seat behind the desk, and Piper sat across from her. “Can you do a DNA test on the child?”

Gretel’s eyes widened for a moment, but she didn’t look particularly shocked. “I can. Are you sure you want me to? It might lead to a lot of questions…”

Piper firmed her shoulders. “I need to know…”

“Who’s the father?” asked Gretel softly, her gaze darting around as though she suspected they were being overheard. “I assume you want me to do this discreetly, so it doesn’t appear in any official records?”

She nodded.

Gretel frowned. “Medical laws require me to get the permission of both parents for a DNA test.” She bit her lip. “Officially, that would be Weston, but—”

“My sister had no interest in maintaining fidelity,” said Piper, finishing her unspoken sentence.

Gretel nodded. “The guidelines are less clear when the father’s identity is unknown, and since this isn’t going in any official report, I suppose I don’t need the commander’s permission.”

“What do you need from me?”

“I just need a sample of chorionic villi from the fetus. I have Pippa’s DNA on file—which can differ from yours by a slight margin despite being identical twins—but it could take days to go through the entire database. At worst, I might not be able to narrow it down beyond species if there’s no direct sample from the father in the database.”

Piper nodded. “I’m almost completely certain any lover she took would be human, so that might speed things up?”

“It should, and his DNA should be in the database, since every child’s sample is collected at birth.”

They returned to the exam room, where Gretel collected a sample. It was a briefly uncomfortable procedure, but over with quickly. She was just pulling her pants above her gently rounded stomach when Gretel looked up from the device in her hand.

“She’s definitely not the commander’s,” she said softly. “The genome sequencing isn’t finished, but there’re already enough differences in the developing profile to exclude him.”

Piper nodded, absorbing the confirmation without allowing herself to analyze it at the moment. She was still relieved that he hadn’t fathered the child inside her, but she imagined it would make it more difficult emotionally for Weston to not be the father.

Or perhaps not, because it certainly absolved him from Pippa’s absurd claim that he had forced her to do something she didn’t want to do. Piper was angry at her sister all over again on Weston’s behalf, but took a few deep breaths to calm down.

“It’ll take a couple of hours to sequence the genome, but at that point, I’ll be able to let you know if there’s any DNA besides human. If not, we’ll know where to focus our search.”

Piper slipped off the table. “One more thing, Gretel. Do you have any idea who my sister might’ve been involved with?”

Gretel tilted her head for a moment, looking like she was thinking. After a moment, she shrugged. “I really can’t say for sure, but I know she spent a lot of time around the bar on the concourse. The bartender might have some idea.”

A dart of dread filled Piper at the news, and it fit together neatly. If the bartender was the father the child inside her, he’d had easy access to the horg root that had tainted her drink. Maybe he hadn’t been trying to kill her, but just remove the baby inside her. A fierce wave of protectiveness shot through her, and her lips clenched. She nodded at Gretel before leaving Medical with Gretel’s promise that she would comm her once she had results.

For a moment, Piper debated about contacting Weston with what she had learned, and what she suspected. However, knowing he was still busy with the Jrojan delegation kept her from doing so.

That, and it didn’t seem like the kind of news she should deliver over the comm system, and she didn’t think he had time to meet with her in person. He was engrossed with diplomatic negotiations, so he didn’t need to be distracted by the reality that he had not fathered the child in her womb, or deal with the absolute proof that Pippa had been unfaithful when his attention was split.

That same feeling of paranoia clung to her, but she tried to keep it in a healthy balance as she walked through the station to the concourse area. The bar was as easy to find as it had been before with Hadley.

The place seemed to be between rush times, though there were still customers at the bar and scattered around the tables. She took a seat at the bar, the farthest away from anyone that she could manage.

She was relieved when Anthracite approached her, because he was the one she suspected. It could be any employee at the bar though, and any one of them could’ve slipped horg root into her drink. She managed a small smile as he offered her another firewheel, like she’d had before. “You have a good memory,” she said carelessly, amazed at how unconcerned she sounded.

He shrugged. “You’re Pippa’s sister, aren’t you? And the commander’s surrogate? Kinda makes you memorable around here.”

Her fake smile faded a bit. “Were you close to Pippa?”

He didn’t answer as he moved off to make her drink. He returned a couple of minutes later after serving someone else to place the drink in front of her. She asked him again, “Were you close to Pippa?”

He frowned. “I certainly saw a lot of her—sometimes here in the bar, though she didn’t drink much,” he said cryptically.

Piper stared at his horns for a moment, noting how they gleamed under the light. He was handsome, and perhaps Pippa would’ve compromised her own sense of superiority to take him as a lover. “Do you know who her boyfriend was?” She asked the question boldly and waited for a shifting in his expression.

He seemed startled by the question, but his neutral expression revealed nothing a second later. “I treat confidences as confidential,” he said in an offhand manner.

“You don’t deny she had a boyfriend?”

He shrugged as someone called his name. “It wasn’t my business.”

She drummed her fingers on the bar. “Isn’t there something you can tell me? Or were you guarding her secrets for another reason?”

He looked puzzled for a moment before his expression shifted to anger. “I’d never do that to the commander. Their problems were between them, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I don’t tell tales, and I don’t see how it’s your business what she was doing before she died. If anyone’s, that’s the commander’s business, isn’t it?”

“It’s my business, because—” She got no farther as he moved away from her to see to two other patrons. She waited a few minutes, growing more impatient as it became clearer and clearer that he had no intention of returning to face interrogation. She probably hadn’t handled it well to start with, and she finally slipped off the bar stool with a heavy sigh. Her drink remained untouched, as she wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

Temporarily stymied, she left the bar and walked a bit. She detoured around Abira, not wanting to buy another one of her charms. She feared the alien lady would chastise her for not wearing the one she’d already purchased, and she managed a small smile at the thought.

As she walked, it occurred to her that all of her sister’s things were somewhere on the station. Feeling a glimmer of hope, she lifted her comm and paged Weston. He came on the screen and looked a little harried, but had a warm smile for her.

“Do you know where they stored Pippa’s things after removal from your quarters? There’s something I want to look for.” She held her breath as she waited to see if he would ask what, having decided not to tell him her suspicions until she had something more concrete to go on.

He was apparently too busy to really think about it. “It’s in the storage area near the oxygen scrubbers sector. There’s a handy little alcove on the second level that works well for storage for personnel.” He looked away for a moment as Hadley called his name. “I have to go, but you’ll need the PIN to get in. It’s A-B-C-1-2-3-4.”

If she had time, she might’ve teased him about the simplicity of the code, but her heart wasn’t really in it. Her mind was too busy turning over the theories in her brain and hoping to find a different connection that might lead her to an answer. “Thanks. I’ll see you tonight.”

The connection severed with a small ding, and she dropped her arm back to her side. There was a station information kiosk a few stores over, where she called up a map of Olympus Station. The storage area wasn’t labeled, but the oxygen scrubbers were. She expected it to be off-limits when she reached it, but perhaps the PIN would grant her access to the entire area.

She hurried on her way, reaching the oxygen scrubber section a few minutes later. It was a massive part of the station that took up five levels and required authorization to enter. She was expecting that, but had a nice surprise when she greeted the employee standing guard. “I’m Piper Marston, and I need to get in there. The commander will give approval—”

The man waved a careless hand. “I received a comm from him a few minutes ago. You’re clear to enter.” He didn’t ask what she wanted inside the sector and clearly didn’t care as he opened the door for her.

She stepped inside, and it closed behind her a moment later with a hiss. She headed toward the lift, but hesitated. Recalling that was how Pippa had met her end, she questioned for the first time if Pippa’s accident had been an accident either. It was a troubling thought and enough to send her to the stairs instead.

She climbed to the second floor and soon saw an arrow and sign marked “Employee Storage.” She followed the signs down and around the twisting corridor, until she reached an area labeled Storage. There was a key pad and also a biometric panel, and she put her hand on it tentatively, expecting the system to request the PIN Weston had given her. She was startled that it accepted her, and even more startled when it identified her as Pippa. Apparently, Pippa had similar biometrics to her that plastic surgery hadn’t changed.

That was convenient for the moment, though she’d want her biometrics updated if she was staying on the station—and she couldn’t imagine leaving. She stepped inside. It appeared to be a circular room, and there was a directory right by the entrance. She typed in Pippa’s name and got the storage cubicle number, which was halfway around the circle.

She hurried toward it and opted for the biometric panel over the keypad. Once again, the system accepted her as Pippa. The door opened for her, and it was little more than the size of a footlocker, though vertically oriented. Most of her sister’s large things were gone, and it was clear Weston hadn’t bothered to keep the vast majority of them.

What remained appeared to be keepsakes, including a clear picture frame on the top that displayed a videogram of Wesley running, which repeated on a continuous loop. On the other side, it immortalized a lock of his hair, and she grew choked up for a moment as she imagined Pippa finding comfort in it.

While she had feared Pippa, she’d never hated her sister the way Pippa had hated her. Piper hadn’t loved her either, finding it impossible to do so when Pippa couldn’t be trusted. While holding Wesley’s picture, for the first time in a long time, if ever, she could pity her.

She blinked back tears and carefully set aside the picture frame as she dug through the container. A brief time into her search, she found a book. It looked similar to the diaries Pippa used to keep, though Piper had never taken up the habit of recording her thoughts. She had been convinced Pippa would’ve read anything she’d written and used it against her, so her thoughts had been another thing she kept locked inside to protect herself from Pippa.

A twinge of guilt shot through her as she pressed her thumb to the biometric scanner on the book. Fortunately, the reader was fooled by her DNA as easily as the entry for the storage area, and it opened.

She soon realized it wasn’t the old-fashioned electronic journals her sister used to write in meticulously by hand with a stylus when they were younger. This book contained an index of videograms she’d recorded and were neatly labeled by date, with tags and even subject matters for some entries.

She tried a simple search first for “baby.” There was an entry from before she was going to marry Weston, and it was particularly difficult to watch as Pippa gloated about having won him from Piper. Piper shook her head, though there was no point in arguing with the recording of a dead woman. It hadn’t been a competition, because she hadn’t been brave enough to put herself into it.

The next entries were about Wesley, and she skimmed those. She couldn’t bear to think about the lost little boy for long, especially with a child in her womb.

Finally, she came to more recent entry, where Pippa was recording her satisfaction with a positive pregnancy test. “It was worth every penny. Anth’s contact really earned his money for bypassing all the safeguards in the Biochip,” she said with an obvious smirk of pleasure.

Piper frowned at that, wondering if Anth was short for Anthracite. It certainly made sense, but left her wondering why the bartender would’ve been agreeable to helping Pippa achieve an unauthorized pregnancy, and then turn around and decide to remove any evidence of it. It didn’t make sense, but it could explain why he was reluctant to talk about Pippa. Maybe he’d known part of her plan and was afraid of being implicated.

The next entry about the baby was far more upsetting. Pippa was crying, and these appeared to be genuine tears. She was clearly in shock that her lover had refused to run away with her. Even worse, he was insisting on an abortion, but Pippa was certain she would change his mind. She seemed to think he just needed to hold the baby to fall in love with it and love Pippa enough to leave Olympus Station with her.

Seeing her anguish drove home to Piper that Pippa might’ve actually cared about this particular lover. She’d clearly gone to great lengths to manipulate him to fall in line with what she wanted, and she had been denied that. Whether it was the shock of one of her schemes not coming to fruition, or the shock of rejection, or a genuine broken heart that prompted her tears and obvious misery, Piper couldn’t say. She didn’t know her sister well enough to guess.

A sound made Piper look up, and she automatically closed the book without thought and placed it back in the locker as she looked down the row and recognized Baxter Frink a few cubicles away. Her heart started racing. At first, she was just angry as she remembered his snide comments from the previous evening. Then fear started to take over as a new possibility occurred to her.

“Are those Pippa’s items? I thought I heard her voice.”

She shrugged. “I was watching a videogram of hers.”

He sneered. “Are you trying to figure out how to fully turn into Pippa by going through her things?” asked Frink with a nasty laugh.

Piper took a step back, trying to be casual about it, but he took a step forward to match. “I was just looking for something for the baby.” She held her breath after uttering the word, watching his expression closely.

His features tightened for a moment as he frowned, but then his expression was neutral again. “How nice of you to carry the baby of the woman who hated you.”

“How do you know she hated me?”

Baxter shrugged. “I assume it was common knowledge.”

She didn’t know him at all, but she was certain he was lying. “I doubt it was common knowledge, but perhaps it was her version of pillow talk? She did love to rant about me just existing.”

Baxter chuckled. “That was enough to set her off. She kept almost obsessive track of you. She took pleasure when you suffered and was angry when you achieved anything of note—like your promotion to the Anjovian fern department lead a few months ago. I thought I’d never hear the end of that. You hadn’t done anything to her as far as I could tell, other than being alive and sharing her DNA.”

Piper shrugged again, struggling for nonchalance as she wondered why he was being so carelessly open about how well he’d known Pippa. Did he expect her to keep it secret, or was he going to ensure she didn’t have a chance to tell anyone? She gulped quietly. “As you said, that seemed to be enough.” She took another step back. “I found what I was looking for, so if you’ll excuse me…” She started to go the long way around, which would avoid the need to pass Baxter.

“I’m just here to see to something myself.”

Piper swallowed as he approached, trying to keep pace with him by taking a step back for every one he took forward. “Did you need something out of Pippa’s locker?”

He shook his head, and he had a cruel grin. “I just need to tie up loose ends. I had to make it a priority when my comm alerted me that Gretel was running a DNA scan on the fetus.”

She frowned. “How did you…?”

He shrugged. “I’m the rep on board. All such scans are automatically relayed to me, but I’ve had a special program searching for the possibility, in case someone got curious.”

The sound of her comm going off in the silence made them both freeze, and she let out a shaky breath. Before he could tell her not to, she turned it on to accept the incoming call. She hoped it was from Weston, but it was Gretel’s face that filled the small screen. She opened her mouth to ask the doctor not to say anything, but it was too late.

“I’ve sequenced the genome, Piper, and the child’s fully human. In fact, the DNA was stored in the database, because he’s stationed right here on Olympus.”

Piper was sure of his identity before Gretel ever uttered the name. “That’s okay. I’ll just stop by later—”

“It’s the Coalition Reproductive Board rep,” said Gretel with a little laugh. “Can you imagine the gossip that fly around here if that ever leaked out? And his career would be over so fast…”

“Hel—” Before she had a chance to finish, Baxter rushed forward, pressing her against the rail and slamming her comm, still on her wrist, against the clear composite material several times until it cracked. She tried to push back against him, but he was strong. He was trying to force her over the rail, and if she fell, there was no guarantee she would survive plunging two stories onto a hard surface.

That gave her impetus to fight harder, and she managed to push away a few inches from the rail before she found an opening. He was twisting to keep her against it, and it opened his legs enough that she was able to drive her knee into his groin.

With a sound like a deflating balloon, Baxter released her and dropped to the floor on his knees, cradling his testicles in his hands. She didn’t wait around for the show as she took off running, reaching the exit to the storage room and plunging down the stairs as fast as she dared. She heard his feet behind her gaining quickly. He must’ve recovered faster than she would’ve expected if he was able to chase her and gain ground on her.

She was almost on the first floor when his hands hit the middle of her back, sending her flying forward. At the last moment, she managed to twist on her side and take the brunt of the impact with her hip. It was the strangest possible time for it to happen, but she swore she felt the baby kick for the first time as she landed with a jolt.

He loomed over her, obviously content that she couldn’t quite catch her breath and get up to fight him. “All you had to do was miscarry. I tried to make this civilized, but you’re as stubborn as Pippa. I blatantly told her why she couldn’t have it, but she refused to get rid of it. That left me no choice but to get rid of her, but then wouldn’t you know the commander had his really brilliant, altruistic idea to have you play surrogate?”

She was starting to be able to breathe again and managed to scoot back a few inches as pain radiated from her hip outward. She didn’t think she’d done serious damage, but Piper was going to be sore for a few days—if she survived that long.

“I tried the horg root, since there was no reason to remove you was well, but you just couldn’t manage to cooperate.” He squeezed his hands into fists as he walked with her, looming over her as she scooted backward. “I’m afraid I have no more time to try to part you from the parasite, so you’re just going to have to die too.”

Taking a deep breath, Piper got to her knees. “What’s the point? Gretel knows too.”

“Gretel can die. So can Pippa’s bartender buddy. He saw her slipping into my quarters more than once, and she confessed his friend helped her short-circuit her Biochip when I demanded to know how it could malfunction. I owe him a comeuppance anyway, but was planning to let everything settle a bit first.”

He sneered. “I’m the Coalition Reproductive Board rep, and they stick me in quarters with the common riffraff. The bartender is my neighbor, and one of the maintenance people is on the other side of my quarters.” He shook his head. “I should be in the executive area, where the commander is.”

She ignored his rant about his inferior housing position. “We’re not going to say anything, you know? Weston’s going to raise the baby as his, so no one needs to know.”

He arched a brow. “I’m sorry, but I can’t trust you not to get justice for Pippa. I can’t trust anyone when it comes to my career and reputation. Pippa was a nice diversion, and I did love her mind games, but not when she turned them on me. I just couldn’t allow that to continue—much like your ability to breathe.”

He lunged forward and bent down, lifting her to her feet by her neck. Piper struggled when his hands closed around her throat, doing her best to displace his grip, but not managing to do much more than get a little bit of extra space and draw in an extra breath of air before his hands clamped tighter.

He was only a little bit taller than her, and perhaps another forty pounds heavier, but he was strong. She dangled in the air from his hands, kicking out with her feet in an attempt to find a perch on anything, hoping it would help alleviate the pressure on her throat created by his hands strangling her as hard as he could. Her vision was going gray at the edges, and though she fought, she couldn’t seem to resist the rising darkness.