AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Now I had to stop. “Dingdong?”
She put a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, just a word I heard once gossiping. It…it must have been wrong. I’ll say peepee if it sounds better.”
I laughed. The things humans came up with.
“So you’re sure?” Eve asked, putting a hand over her belly.
I wanted to tell her now that I wasn’t 10 fingers sure, but Thuliak and I had agreed. Early agreements made in a triumvirate had to be honored. They were the foundation of the relationship. I couldn’t break my word now.
“I’m certain,” I said. “In the next few days, you should see it with your own eyes. The nerds also could do some maths, and based on when I was able to feel the taps, you’ll give birth within the month. Likely sooner.”
“We need to be fast then, right?” she asked, “get into Ginsburg within the next few days, then I can help out the rebuilding effort for a few weeks maybe—”
“No,” I said, shaking my head and preparing for the part where she’d kick and scream. “We travel only far enough to link up with more Khetar, and then we move you to safety, far from the city, until all the pirates are killed and order is restored.” I knew it would crush her, so I added a, “Sorry, Love,” at the end.
It still crushed her.
“But, Tschenkar, they’ll need me in Ginsburg. And they’ll need you too.”
“We’ve got the radios now. Thuliak’s going to build more, throw them down from orbit. I can do most of what I need to do with one of those radios. And that’s all thanks to you.”
“You’re humoring me again.”
Now I moved. I wrapped my arms around her, came up behind her. I put a hand on her belly. And I smiled. I whispered into her ear.
The other two women, they were staring. I was waiting for them to maybe politely step away, find something else to do, but they just kept staring.
Anyway, I whispered right into Eve’s ear, “You don’t want to give birth in a war zone, trust me, Love. Talk to me honestly, is that what you want?”
“No,” she said, crying.
“Yeah, I know you wanted to help, but if the Hivemind is really gone, then Eden’s going to need you. So are the Khetar. Everyone’s going to need you, Love. These four little babies are going to need you, and when they’re not needing you, all these other people are always going to need you too. Hell, I’d say quite frankly that you’re going to get tired of being needed, so take a break from it while you still can.”
“Okay,” she said. “So Thuliak and you? This is what you talked about?”
I nodded. 75% of our conversation had been clarifyingexactlywhat the taps had felt like. And him asking me at least fifteen times if I was certain I’d felt them. He hadn’t quite believed that I’d actually counted, or that I’d counted accurately. My skill in maths—or lack thereof—had somehow spread like wildfire throughout Thuliak’s swarm. Those cunts would jump on any little thing to make me look worse than Thuliak. Though after being on the surface with Eve and seeing her build a weapon out of a car, I was starting to think that maths wasn’t really so much of a “little” thing after all. If maths would help us kill people better, we’d all learn them.
“We talked about some other stuff,” I said, bracing myself.
This is where I had to rope Ski Coach and Bartender in. I couldn’t force them either, or I’d end up no better than those pirates. I had to get them to go along willingly, and I only had one shot at it. I’d considered asking Eve’s advice, but it would take too long. We had to move fast, while the snapshot description Thuliak had given me of everyone’s position nearby was still accurate.
“Look,” I said, “Ski Coach Cleopatra and Bartender Julia, you two came with us willingly. It probably didn’t work out the way you intended it to, especially for you, Ski Coach, but—”
“You came back for me,” she said. “A lot of women would have just given up and left me for worse than dead. I don’t blame you—any of you—for what happened to me. Or what almost happened to me, that is.”
“Good,” I said. “You don’t have to answer me out loud, but what’s the real reason the two of you came with us?”
Julia shrugged. “When you and Sex Te—Engineer—showed up, it hit me that you could have just as well been pirates. I didn’t want to sit around and roll the dice on who would visit us next.”
“For me,” Cleopatra said, both of them ignoring the part where I said they didn’t have to say it out loud, “I just wanted to find my own Khetar. Well, now that I’ve seen your Triumvirate thingy, now I want to find two Khetar.”
I noticed Julia nodding. The real reason was clear. They wanted alien cock, and I was about to offer it to them.
“Here’s the plan,” I said, “provided you two agree to it. Thuliak’s ship did a high-resolution scan of our location. The good news is that Khetar are closer to us than more pirates. Captain Limpdick or whatever that cunt’s name was is further north, way up near the pass. The bad news is that the Khetar near us aren’t fromHarbingeror fromWrath. They aren’t even from Eriok’s ship. That cunt is still out of contact.”
Cleopatra put her hand up in the air, as if she were pointing up at the sky, but all her fingers were together. I looked up and squinted anyway, trying to see if there was some kind of military aircraft approaching.
“That means she has a question,” Eve said.
