Mothership Read online

  Without warning Captain Bob releases Kate from his grip, and as she slumps against the wall with tears in her eyes, he smashes Desi across the face with the butt of his gun.

  “How many?” he shouts, his voice as hard as steel. Blood flows from Desi’s broken nose. “How many of these girls have you tampered with? How many of our children have you murdered?”

  I’m frantically scanning the second file now. It’s another list of all the girls, except this one has only a single box next to each name. The heading at the top reads Implementation.

  “A handful,” Desi whimpers in reply. Even from the corner of my eye I can see the blood pooling in his mouth, staining his teeth. “The pregnancy needed to be nearly full-term before we could safely implant the new embryos, so only the girls who were approaching nine months have been processed.”

  Three names. Only three names on the new list have a check in their box. The first two are Britta and Other Cheerleader, both of whom were due to pop any day.

  “Nine months,” Bob says to Cole. “That explains why they were trying to save those two from the pool when we arrived. They’d already undergone this barbaric process.” Bob grabs Desi by the collar. “Were there more?”

  “Wait.” Cole’s face goes taut as he takes in the news, and from across the room I hear Britta wail.

  “No,” she whimpers. “No.” Cole tries to console her, but she shoves him away.

  I tune them out. I have to. Because there’s a third name on the list with a check beside it.

  “Were there more?”

  Elvan Nara.

  I’ve been processed.

  I feel the floor give way beneath me. It’s not mine. The baby’s not mine. And it’s not Cole’s, either. I don’t even realize I’m shaking until I feel Cole’s warm hand, steady on my shoulder. “You find something, Elvs?” he says. He peers at the lap-pad in front of me. There’s a strain in his voice, and I can tell he’s trying to push down whatever emotions are cropping up over the news that Britta’s baby is no longer his. To hear about mine now right on top of that . . .

  Without stopping to think I snap closed the second file and hide the link. “Just run-of-the-mill patient files,” I tell him, trying to sound as calm as possible. I know he’ll find out sooner or later. I know I have to tell him. But not now, not like this. Maybe I can hold off just a little while.

  “Hey, uh, Desi’s bleeding pretty bad,” I say. Kate must be over her initial shock sooner than I am, because she moves to tend to Desi’s wound with supplies she seems to have rummaged up from a drawer somewhere.

  Bob stops her. “He bleeds until I get answers.”

  Cole takes out his phone and syncs it with Dr. Marsden’s computer.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “There could be useful info in these files about what the Jin’Kai have been up to,” he replies. “You never know. They might want to look at them back at headquarters.” I shake my head. Great, Cole, pick now to become smart and sensible.

  “So why even come to Earth?” Ramona asks Desi. “I mean, if you guys all came from the same planet on the other side of the galaxy, why come all the way here just to mess with one another? What, your planet didn’t have an ample supply of gullible teenage girls to schbadoink?”

  Desi’s gaze turns from Captain Bob, still threatening him with that ray gun, to Ramona. “I see your fearless leaders haven’t told you everything,” he says, wincing a little at the pain in his leg.

  Bob releases Desi with a shove and takes a step back, glowering.

  “What haven’t we been told?” Ramona presses.

  “The Jin’Kai arrived on Earth fifty-one years ago,” Desi says, his breath worried and uneven as he speaks, “because Horon-4 could no longer sustain us.”

  Next to me Cole’s phone has finished syncing. He slips it into his back pocket without even bothering to flip through the files, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

  “Horon-4,” Ramona says with a snort. She sounds like she’s reading the description for some bad sci-fi flick. “That’s the planet all you goons are from originally?”

  “No,” Desi replies. “Horon-4 was the Jin’Kai’s fifth colony. Earth will be the sixth, the next in line to present a fresh crop of hosts for our young.”

  “First off,” Ramona snaps, “I am not a crop. Second, why did you need fresh hosts?”

  I’ve been only half-listening to this conversation, but I tune back in when I feel Cole’s body go tense beside me.

  “You okay?” I ask him, which is sort of funny, considering I’m the one who just discovered I have an evil-alien-swap baby inside me.

  But Cole doesn’t answer. He’s staring at me, an odd expression on his face. It looks almost like . . . guilt?

  “Elvs,” he says softly. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  I look at him curiously, but he doesn’t get a chance to say anything else before Desi starts speaking again.

  “The physical resources required of the body in order to nourish a Jin’Kai through its fetal development are enormous. Once the child has come to term, the womb cannot support another fetus, Jin’Kai or otherwise.”

  At that, Britta shrieks. “You mean, we’re gonna be barren? Having one of your monster babies means I can’t have any babies of my own?” Britta’s eyes are red and blotchy. From the table Other Cheerleader moans again.

  Desi shakes his head slowly. “I’m afraid that you will indeed be unable to have any more children,” he confirms.

  My heart drops into my stomach. I will never be a mother. I will never have a family. I will never—

  “Of course, that’s true of all of the girls here,” Desi continues. “The gestation of an Almiri fetus results in the same condition.”

  And that’s it, right there—the worst piece of information I’ve gotten today. Not that Cole isn’t human. Not that the baby I’m carrying isn’t mine. It’s not even that evil alien freakazoids have swapped Cole’s baby for one of their own.

  It’s that Cole knew. One look at his face tells me that much. He can barely stand to return my gaze. Cole knew that birthing his baby would leave me barren—without the choice to ever have children of my own—and he never told me. He’s the one person I ever trusted with my whole heart, and he never even tried to tell me. Which makes him just as bad as any of them.

  “Well, nuts to that,” Ramona exclaims. “I’m not letting you guys wreck my junk for some mini E.T. Before it ‘comes to term’ I want a C-section. You guys have a preemie ward where you come from?”

  “You can’t,” Bob says, still glowering. “You can’t have a C-section. The fetus is adapting to survival in Earth’s atmosphere up until the very end of its development, at which point it releases an enzyme into the host’s system that initiates labor. This enzyme is what damages the reproductive system of the host. Removing the child before this point would be tantamount to killing it.”

  As this new information sinks in, a deathly quiet fills the room. But the eerie still is interrupted by the last person I ever thought would channel my innermost thoughts. Britta stuffs the Jin’Kai baby into Other Cheerleader’s very hesitant arms and, with a guttural battle cry, throws herself at Cole, who grabs her by the forearms. She struggles against him, beating his chest with her fists.

  “You no-good rotten alien son of a bitch! How could you do this to me? You’ve ruined me! You’ve ruined everything!” She breaks down more and more as she screams, until she’s sobbing, her fists loosened so that she’s just weakly pawing at Cole now. Cole has the good sense to remain speechless, his face flushing a deep purple.

  As if the room itself can no longer bear the tension, the floor and walls all shudder as the ship goes through another convulsion. The glass wall of the exam room shatters, and suddenly the entire remaining flock of terrified girls pours inside with us. The sound of creaking, contracting metal reverberates loudly through the walls and echoes down the hallway. The shudders are getting closer and
closer together now.

  “We have to get going,” I say to no one in particular, as the girls who have just piled into the room shriek and squeal. I can’t look Cole in the eyes. I may never look at him again. “It’s only a matter of time before there’s a critical breach somewhere and we lose all of our remaining atmosphere.”

  “Elvie’s right,” Cole says. “We need to move.” He tries to help Other Cheerleader off the table, but she flinches at his touch and cowers away.

  “Leave her,” Bob says flatly. “We have to get the other girls out of here before the whole ship breaks apart.”

  Cole looks confused. “Sir?” he asks, still trying to cajole Other Cheerleader to her feet.

  “Do I need to repeat myself, Archer?” Bob barks. He gestures to Other Cheerleader and Britta dismissively. “Leave the both of them, and the traitor as well.”

  Cole still doesn’t get it, so I make it clear. “He means leave the Jin’Kai,” I tell him, giving Bob a cold stare. “And save only the girls still carrying Almiri.”

  With that the other girls break into a confused chatter. I can see Kate trying to explain what information’s just come to light, but they are too frantic with everything that’s going on to be able to absorb any of it.

  Cole looks disbelievingly at Captain Bob, as though he’s been ordered to drown a puppy. “We can’t just leave them, sir!”

  “We will not jeopardize the entire mission for a couple of enemy agents, Archer. Now, follow my orders or so help me, if we survive the day, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

  “But they’re not enemy agents,” Cole continues, his voice growing stronger and more defiant. “They’re just girls.”

  “They’re incubators!” Bob shouts.

  The room goes silent. I look between Bob and Cole, who now stand toe-to-toe, each one trying to seem taller than the other. Cole turns to me, his face riddled with regret and apologies and worry. I look immediately away. If he wants some sort of validation, it’s not going to come from me. But when he speaks again, his voice hardens into one of absolute resolve. I glance back up to find him looking Captain Bob right in the eye.

  “I’m not going anywhere without them,” he says. “All of them.”

  “Neither am I,” says Ramona.

  Bob blinks, but says nothing.

  “Me neither,” Natty adds, linking arms with Ramona.

  And one by one all the other girls follow suit. Finally Cole looks to me again, and I rise, without a word, and take my place next to him, helping Other Cheerleader to her feet.

  Bob just fumes as his eyes pass over each of us. When he lays his eyes on me, his shoulders drop.

  “Let’s get going before none of us makes it out alive,” he says. “Archer, you’re responsible for these girls’ lives. I hope you don’t screw it up like everything else you touch.”

  • • •

  “Does this readout show the most current damage?” Bob asks, handing me his phone. I glance at the schematic for the level we’re on, looking for any potential dangers that might have cropped up between our location and the linen room during the Echidna’s most recent contractions.

  “Everything seems clear,” I say as my eyes scan the offices, the garbage chute, the automated cleaning systems. Would Bob even be talking to me if he knew what was inside me right now? I shake my head clear. I hand him back the phone. “Straight shot,” I say. “We’re good to go.”

  “Still following your princes in shining armor?” Desi mocks. His wound is healing already, but there’s still a sizeable hole through his leg, and he limps along with Kate to support him. “I would have thought you were smarter than that, Elvie.”

  I don’t respond. Instead I work on trying to make one of my father’s assessment lists in my head:

  Situation:

  1) Impregnated by superhunk. Am an expecting mom at sixteen.

  2) Superhunk is from outer space. So there’s that.

  3) Alien love child will make me infertile.

  4) Superhunk withheld this little tidbit.

  5) Points 3 and 4 potentially moot because rival aliens have switched said alien love child with a parasite of their own, yielding the same results, namely, the aforementioned infertility.

  Solution:

  Um . . .

  Well . . .

  Shit.

  I guess Bob isn’t up for any Jin’Kai needling at the moment. He rounds on Desi, his eyes flushed red. “If your kind had simply followed the Code,” he spits, “none of this would have ever happened. None of us would be here.”

  “What code?” Natty asks, all chipper.

  Desi snorts in Bob’s direction. “You Almiri and your precious Code,” he says. “An archaic law best left to die on the barren planet where it was written.”

  Ramona pulls another cigarette seemingly out of thin air. “Hey, Cole,” she calls down the hallway as she tries to light it. “You want to explain what Frick and Frack here are bitching about?”

  Cole looks at Bob, who shakes his head, indicating that Cole should remain quiet. But Cole begins anyway. “Where we came from there were two species. The Klahnia—us—and the Pouri. The Pouri were a people a lot like you humans—males and females, standard reproduction. And the Klahnia mated with the Pouri, and produced Klahnia babies. You wouldn’t be able to tell the two species apart—they looked exactly the same. At first the Klahnia didn’t really understand their, whatsit, their symbiotic relationship with the Pouri. Believe it or not, it was several thousands of years before they even knew they were a different species. By the time they realized they were making their hosts barren, it was too late. The Pouri had been wiped out. So the Klahnia had to find new worlds with compatible species. They found six, Earth being the farthest away. Before they split into the six colonies and went their separate ways, they came up with the Code, which is, like, this super-important set of laws for how reproduction should be carried out on the new homeworlds. Klahnia mating would be very selective, and very sparse, to make sure that no Klahnia ever wiped out another host species again.” I nod, despite myself. This is what Cole told me earlier, in the bathroom. I keep walking, looking straight ahead, as Cole finishes up his little history lesson. “The Code is the single most sacred tenet that holds our people together. The penalty for disregarding these rules is very severe.”

  “How severe?” Ramona asks. “Like they cut off your man parts or something?”

  “Very severe,” Cole repeats.

  A chill goes down my spine. Because I remember the other thing Cole told me in the bathroom.

  I chose you.

  That wasn’t just Cole being a doofy romantic. That was Cole blatantly disregarding the highest law of the Almiri, despite some serious freaking consequences.

  But that choice was exactly what got me here in the first place. Cole may have risked his future to be with me, but he risked mine, too. And the difference was that he knew what he was risking. If I ever manage to make it safely back home—which, at this point, is seeming sort of doubtful—the only baby I’ll ever be able to have isn’t even human. Hell, it isn’t even his. I’ll never get to be the mother I always thought I would be.

  Cole’s choice has left me without one.

  Ramona continues peppering Cole with questions regarding the more salacious aspects of the Code. “So you guys are told who you can, like, do it with?” she asks. “And they only let you get it on every hundred years or something?”

  Cole coughs, composing himself. “It’s not exactly that strict, but . . .”

  “Dude, the Almiri must have quite the porn stash.”

  Ever since learning about Cole’s treachery in the exam room, Britta has remained completely silent. She and Other Cheerleader are shuffling along at the back of our group, stony faced. Other Cheerleader won’t even touch the baby. So now Heather’s carrying it, tucked under her arm like a football. It doesn’t seem to mind. Jin’Kai infants appear to be good nappers, at least.

  But suddenly Britta seems to feel the
need to talk.

  “So what would happen to an Almiri if he broke the Code?” she asks. She says it loudly, her voice scratched from crying.

  Cole does not answer.

  Captain Bob stops marching to look at each of us girls as he says what he does next. “There is no greater crime for the Almiri. By following the Code the Almiri have been a great boon to mankind, and both species have thrived side by side ever since our arrival.” He points his gun in Desi’s direction, although most of the venom seems to have left his veins now. “Whereas these careless fools have abandoned the path, and in their recklessness they’ve destroyed entire worlds, and waged war on their own brothers.”

  “The Code allows you to hide from what you are,” Desi says.

  “Predators,” I whisper.

  A small smile crosses Desi’s lips. “Exactly,” he replies.

  “We are not predators,” Bob snaps. “We have created a mutually beneficial relationship with humans.”

  Ramona drops her cigarette to the floor and smashes it under her boot. “Mutually beneficial?” she says with a snort. “How? By only making some of us infertile instead of everyone, like these bozos? So that it’s just our bum luck if we never get to have any kids of our own?”

  “We came to a planet run by a physically and technologically inferior species, and propelled your development further than you could ever have hoped to achieve in such a short time span.” Bob is sounding a little like my dad when he tries to explain to Ducky why his Apple lap-pad is so much more reliable than Ducky’s old Herschel 2T. “We’ve given you some of your greatest thinkers. Music, literature, science—you name it. We have contributed the giants!”

  “So you’re saying we’d be hunkered down in caves,” Ramona sneers, “counting on our fingers and toes, without you guys? Scratching pictures on walls and humming to ourselves, is that it? That justifies selective sterilization?”

  Bob’s response is calm. “Humankind has flourished with us.”

  “Maybe the species has flourished,” I say suddenly. I can’t hold it in anymore. “But not the poor girls you rob of any choice of what to do with their bodies. What to do with their lives.” I’m practically spitting the words out now. “They’re just incubators to you. You don’t give a rat’s ass about them. Or about us.”