Mothership Read online

  “So . . .,” Ramona muses. “Go around?”

  A little extra walking never hurt anybody.

  We’re already well on our way through the medical corridor before I realize that we’re missing my two favorite bloated blondes.

  Now, okay, I’m not going to lie. It does, in fact, occur to me that I am the only person to notice Britta and Other Cheerleader’s absence. And I do not, as it happens, like them very much. I could take their disappearance as a sudden burst of their karmic comeuppance and leave them behind.

  But goddammit if I’m not just full of moral fiber or something.

  “Cole,” I say, yanking on his arm. We’re near the back of the group, scuttling the long way around toward the showers. Kate’s still wailing at Captain Bob to get his dirty hands off her “lover,” and quite frankly I think it’s making everyone just a little nauseous. No wonder two of our own got left behind. “Britta’s missing. And Other Cheer—her friend, too.”

  I know Britta’s been giving Cole the cold shoulder for the past hour or so—ever since she found out his true identity—and there’s a little part of me that almost hopes he’ll be indifferent to their disappearance. But doggone it, he wouldn’t be Cole then, would he?

  “Sir!” Cole calls ahead to Captain Bob. Bob turns, his gun still expertly trained on Desi. “We have to go back. There’s still two girls near the gym.”

  And just as quickly as we scurried down the hall, we scurry back.

  Britta and Other Cheerleader aren’t hard to find. They’re sitting, slumped on the floor against the wall where the vending machine used to be. We can still hear the fit-bots pounding on the doors from inside. Britta is cradling her friend in this awkward sort of headlock, and let’s just say Other Cheerleader should be glad today’s not senior photo day, because she has looked better. Her cheeks are as red as apples and are puffed out enough that she could be stashing a few in her mouth for good measure, and, most distressing, she’s holding her big fat pregnant stomach in a way that can mean only one thing.

  “Oh, shit,” Ramona says, echoing what I’m sure every single one of us girls is thinking. After all, you don’t get knocked up without being fairly clear about what comes at the end of the pregnant rainbow. “You are not seriously planning on having your alien baby right now, are you? That has got to be, like, some terrible timing.”

  Other Cheerleader does not even bother to answer that. She just grits her teeth and lets out this, like, seriously freakish feral scream. Natty wails and hides behind Ramona in fear, as though she’s afraid Other Cheerleader’s contractions might send her into labor too. And Heather mutters under her breath, “I’m positive that wasn’t a complete sentence.”

  Britta, for her part, shoots eye daggers up at Cole and snaps, “You planning on doing something, nimrod? Or are you just going to stand there?”

  Actually, it seems like Cole just plans on standing there. Captain Bob sighs, like he’s cursing himself for having signed up for this mission. His grip still tight on Desi, he jerks his chin in Britta’s direction. “When did the contractions start?” he asks her.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Britta says. She seems a little freaked out. And, okay, the girl sucks, but it’s hard to blame her. Based on the preggers time line, Britta should have been the first to blow. She’s farther along than any of us. So if Other Cheerleader’s huffing and puffing, it only stands to reason that any minute she will be too. “Her due date’s not for eight more days. I think the fit-bots freaked her out. She started shaking and . . .”

  Captain Bob takes stock of the situation and makes up his mind quickly. “Archer,” he instructs Cole, “pick her up.”

  “Pick her up?” Cole repeats.

  “You think she can run on her own?” Bob asks. “Pick the girl up.”

  “But we can’t just . . .,” Cole begins. “She’s obviously . . . Don’t you think we should wait until . . .”

  “There’s no telling how long the labor will last,” Bob replies. “And we need to get moving. We can’t sit around and wait for nature.”

  “But what if—”

  “Archer!”

  And with that, Cole scoops Other Cheerleader into his arms, and we double back to the medical corridor. Britta limps along at the back of the group, still clearly having some trouble with her ankle. But as much as Captain Bob may want to ignore Other Cheerleader’s shrieking, it’s becoming increasingly difficult.

  Finally, Ramona’s had enough. “Dude,” she tells Captain Bob, her hands over her ears. Other Cheerleader’s working on another set of contractions—the loudest yet. “I’m all for making a speedy exit and everything, but we gotta stop. That thing’s gonna pop out of her any second, and she can’t exactly shoot it out while we’re running.”

  Captain Bob shakes his head stubbornly, but I sense a hint of doubt in his eyes. “We don’t have any time to—”

  “Dr. Marsden’s office,” I say suddenly. Bob offers me a sidelong glance. “It’s on the way to the showers, about thirty meters from here. We won’t even have to turn any extra corners.”

  “Fine,” Bob grumbles.

  • • •

  I smell it before I see it. That familiar scent of Brut aftershave and peppermints. And suddenly I have this weird thought that maybe when we turn that corner Dr. Marsden will be sitting in his office, waiting for me with a smile. Like always. That he might even be able to help us with this whole wailing-girl-in-labor thing.

  But of course he isn’t. He’s lying on the floor outside his office, blood dripping down the neck of his once white lab coat. He’s been shot through the face.

  I step delicately over the body on my way to the office door, and I try not to let it get to me, the sight of my favorite faculty member dead under my feet. Obviously the good doctor was Jin’Kai, just like everyone else on board. Obviously he wasn’t as good as I thought he was. But sometimes you hope you’ll be proven wrong.

  By the time we plop Other Cheerleader onto the birthing table, she’s practically yelping in pain. “It’s coming!” she wails, thrashing her head about. “Don’t let it kill me!”

  The room is small—cold and white and sterile, and the entire wall between the room and the hallway is glass. Which always struck me as sort of odd—this place you go to have your girl parts examined, on view for the entire world to see—although there is a pull-down screen for privacy. The shelves that line the three other walls are filled with boxes of syringes, bandages, what have you. The birthing/exam table sits against one edge of the wall, and there are two chairs as well, along with three lap-pads strewn across the desk. I’m not sure what it says about me that this cold, clinical spot was the one place on the ship where I actually felt welcome.

  Because the room is so small, Captain Bob orders most of the girls to stay outside. But he orders me into the room with a curt, “We may need someone with a brain.” He tries to push Ramona out, but she insists that she wants a piece of the action, and Bob’s so busy training his gun on Desi that he doesn’t seem to have the wherewithal to argue. As the rest of the group mingles in the hallway, whispering and screeching and generally being the girls that they are, Captain Bob sneaks in a last word to Natty. “If any of them give you any trouble, you have my authority to sit on them.” She just nods, bug-eyed.

  The only people left in the room now are me, Captain Bob, Cole, Desi, Ramona, and Britta. And Other Cheerleader, of course, ’cause she’s the one about to burst. Britta’s squeezing Other Cheerleader’s hand and shouting out things that she must think are helpful, like “Don’t push too hard! You don’t want its alien brain to leak all over you!” And Ramona’s standing at the foot of the birthing table, like a catcher waiting for the pitch. Bob’s still got his gun trained on Desi, but his focus is on the birthing table. Desi’s is too. So is mine, for that matter. The girls outside have their faces plastered up against the glass wall, peering inside anxiously.

  I’ve always thought that I’m not too shabby at the sciences. I know all abo
ut biology. Girl, boy, baby, birth. You’d think that mentally I’d be prepared for such a sight.

  I am not.

  Watching an entire freaking baby exit Other Cheerleader’s bottom half is seriously the most horrifying thing I’ve ever witnessed. And what’s worse is the way the Goober starts kicking, like he can’t wait to inflict the same fate upon me. Hold your alien horses, I think at him as I rub my belly to calm him the shit down. Not for, like, three weeks, dude. Or—I think, focusing on the terror before me again—like, never. God, I can’t look away. It’s like a horror flick. It’s bloody and messy and squirmy and gross. And at the end of it, this thing—a little creature with eyes and fingers and working knees—has actually exited a person, right before my very eyes.

  “It’s a boy!” Britta tells Other Cheerleader, gazing down at the slimy kid in Ramona’s arms. She looks relieved.

  “Of course it’s a boy,” Cole replies as he cuts the umbilical cord. He grabs a clean white towel off the counter beside him and swipes at the thing’s eyes, wiping the goop away. I have to say, it does look remarkably like a human. Ten fingers, ten toes, eyes and ears and mouth in all the right places. We, all of us, lean in to take a look at it, and together—despite ourselves—we give a sort of collective “Awwwww.” It is pretty darn cute. But . . .

  “Didn’t you say all Almiri are born with that starkiss thingie?” I ask.

  “Wait, what?” Cole squints and leans in closer to the baby. But there’s no cluster of freckles to be seen. Captain Bob inches nearer the baby, and, gun still in one hand, begins frantically swiping at the baby’s cheek, as though that might make the distinctive Almiri birthmark appear.

  It does not.

  “His browridge,” Captain Bob says. And I swear he shakes the baby just a little bit when he says it. I may not have taken On Your Own yet, but even I know you’re not supposed to do that. “Look at his goddamn browridge.”

  We look.

  Sure enough, there is something peculiar about the kid’s brow. It protrudes just a smidge. Not in a Cro-Magnon way, but in a way where you can totally tell the kid’s gonna be a macho, macho man when he grows up. Which would not be the worst thing in the world, except for the fact that, while Cole and his Almiri buddies are very pretty, they are hardly the he-man type. The only person here that fits that physical description would be . . .

  “Desi!”

  The dude is steps from the door, and he might have made it out without anyone noticing, except that Captain Bob has the reflexes of a cat. In an instant Bob is on him, ray gun aimed expertly with his right arm while he cradles the baby in his left. “Explain this,” he tells Desi.

  And Desi, shaking like a leaf, can only manage to get a few words out. “She’s been processed,” he tells us.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IN WHICH THE PAST PORTENDS THE FUTURE, AND OUR BIOLOGY GETS ALL PHILOSOPHICAL

  ok here’s 1 for the record books.

  Technically we’re not allowed to use our phones during class hours, even if we’re not in class, but I’ve always thought this rule was ridiculous. They really expect us to swirl around Earth and not attempt to make contact with it? In the past three months I have become an expert at blinking Ducky with my phone hidden in my pocket.

  Right now, however, I don’t need to go the pocket route. That’s because, instead of suffering through English lit, I am currently sitting outside Dr. Marsden’s office, waiting for my checkup. My due date’s not for three and a half weeks, but Dr. Marsden says that as of this Monday—just three short days—the baby will technically be full term, and I should expect it to arrive anytime after that.

  Color me excited.

  I palm the phone, hold my hand up to face level, and—snap!—take a pic of the view through the glass door of the doc’s office. I check the resolution quickly before I blink it off to Ducky. Yep, it’s clear. Britta McVicker, making a face like a wounded wildebeest as Dr. M jabs her in the leg with a huge needle. Priceless.

  I have to wait only forty-nine seconds before I get a reply from Ducky. We’ve been working on the Caption the Britta Pic contest for the past six weeks or so, and I have a feeling that today’s entry will be a real winner.

  britta gives birth to a mag sphere.

  I’m still wiping the snot from my nose when the door to Dr. Marsden’s office opens and Britta steps out, back in her regular clothes. That is to say, her neon-pink maternity dress and faux-zebra Chuggz boots. I think pregnancy might have made her go blind.

  Dr. Marsden peeks his head out of the room. “Don’t forget to take those vitamins, Britta. Your baby will be here any day now.” He turns his attention to me. “Elvie. Won’t you come on inside?”

  As I stand up and Britta passes me, she coughs out a “Slore.” This is the particularly genius expression she and Other Cheerleader have come up with for me recently, which I’m assuming is supposed to mean something along the lines of “slut whore.” I would explain to them how the epithet is a touch redundant, but then I’d just have to explain to them what “redundant” means. I step into the office and settle onto the exam table as Dr. Marsden closes the door.

  Dr. Marsden has always been my favorite faculty member. For some reason he’s super-easy to talk to. It’s too bad he’s not an actual teacher, because then I’d have at least one class that didn’t suck my balls so much. But I guess if you have to feel comfortable around only one person, it’s nice for that person to be your doctor. It doesn’t hurt that he’s dreamy either. I actually sent a screen cap of him to Malikah when we first got here, and she said he reminded her of Jax Richter, her all-time favorite singer, of Jax Sabbath fame. I think he’s way hunkier than Jax, though, with his thick black hair, icy blue eyes, and superhero jawline. And, okay, maybe it’s gross to spend so much time thinking about how dreamy your doctor is, especially since he spends so much time all up in your girl parts, but as has been previously established, I do have hormones. Sometimes those sorts of thoughts sneak in.

  “How’s the baby been since last we saw you?” Dr. Marsden asks as he snaps on a new pair of fiber-mesh gloves. “Still kicking you like—how did you phrase it—a drunken ronin?”

  I purse my lips together to stifle a smile. “Yeah,” I tell him. “The kid’s definitely out to avenge the death of his master. Although the rubbing trick you taught me seems to be helping a little.”

  “Good.” He looks into my eyes with his little vision scope thingie. “Any vision changes?”

  “Mine or the baby’s?”

  He smiles. “I’ll take that as a no. How’s everything else going? Grades? Friends?”

  I think about that while he sticks his little lighty-up wand thing inside my ear. “Fair to middling,” I reply.

  He nods, then clicks the wand off. “Ears look good,” he tells me as he begins attaching the electrodes to monitor my vitals. “You know, I’ve noticed you always schedule these appointments during your English lit class.”

  “Do I?” I say, raising an eyebrow. “I hadn’t noticed that coincidence. Maybe that’s when I’m feeling the most exam-y.”

  “Mmmm.” He presses the stethoscope to my back. “Deep breath.” I breathe. “It’s funny, though, because Mr. Wilks tells me you currently have a D-minus in his class. You’d think you’d want to stick around to boost your grade a little.”

  I try to sigh at that, but Dr. Marsden nudges my back so that I’m sitting up straight again, and instructs me to take another deep breath.

  “Look,” I say when we’re finally done with stethoscope time, and the doc has moved on to whacking my knee with a rubber hammer. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy English class.” A blatant lie. “And Mr. Wilks is great and everything.” He’s basically Beelzebub with an English degree. “It’s just that I don’t understand why I have to spend so much time poring over Huck Finn, when I already know that I totally don’t care. Why do that homework when I could be studying physics, a class that might actually get me somewhere? My time is a finite resource.”


  Dr. Marsden clucks his tongue. “Of course it is,” he says gently. Then: “You’ve heard of the Wright brothers, haven’t you?”

  “Huh?” I ask. “Like Wilbur and Orville? Invented the airplane?”

  “Precisely. Curiously enough, the brothers never would have come up with the idea had they not spent their early years working with printing presses and bicycles, learning the physics of complex machinery.”

  “Yes, but it was all still physics,” I counter. Even so, my guard is rising. I haven’t been my father’s daughter for sixteen years without learning how “interesting facts” can be turned into a secret lecture. “I see where you’re going with this, Doc. You’re saying I should work hard in all my classes, because you never know what might be important down the line?”

  “That’s an interesting interpretation, Elvie,” Dr. Marsden says as he checks my tonsils with his thumb and forefinger, “but I was just trying to tell you a nice story. Oh, you know what else that reminds me of? Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, who discovered the structure of the benzene ring—the key necessary to creating plastics, rubbers, and all sorts of modern technology—because of a dream about a snake eating its own tail. Just imagine. These very gloves”—he snaps the wrist of his left glove in my face with a thwap!—“would never have been created had Kekulé not paid attention to something that most scientists would deem utterly irrelevant.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say, rolling my eyes. I have to admit I’m smiling just a twinge, though. “But the interpretation of dream imagery as signifiers in your field does not mean that reading Mark Twain is going to help me with my thermodynamics lab. Although I see your point.”

  “Point?” Dr. Marsden replies. “No, I don’t think I was trying to make any point.” He sits down in his swivel chair and tabs through my chart on his lap-pad. “You know that scientists only managed to cure cancer because one Dr. Roger Tsien thought it might be interesting to extract fluorescent proteins from jellyfish? Or that—”