"Don't know, Lieutenant," Dawson yawned. "She's asleep, but I don't know if that's a good sign or not. At least it keeps Winnie quiet."
Fenstermacher lay bundled in a corner, sound asleep. Sleep had been hard to come by, and most of the men were upstairs in the loft trying to recover from the long night. Mendoza and Schmidt sat at the table helping Tatum and Shannon take care of the babies. Miraculously, both infants napped. During the previous night and day they had efficiently taken shifts whining and screaming. The confined space of the lodge had never seemed smaller or more crowded.
The silence ended. Everyone's attention was collected by a gulping, gasping groan followed by loud grunts. Fenstermacher leapt awake and dove through the slitted opening. Dawson, moving more slowly, followed. Agonizing minutes crawled by.
"Okay! Okay!" came Tookmanian' s deep voice. Lee yelled and gagged.
"Don't hold back, Les," Dawson encouraged. "Go ahead and scream."
"Okay, momma. Push!" Tookmanian growled. "Okay! Okay! Okay! Okay!"
"Come on, Les," Goldberg gasped. "You can do it!"
Lee screamed—a deep, throaty roar never expected from the shy medic. Outside the curtain everyone stared with grieved wonder, unable to shut out reality by simply closing their eyes. It was a prison. Deathly cold beyond the stone walls of the lodge, it was too cold to leave; they were trapped! They shared! If not the pain, all hands shared the uncertainty and the stark terror of the suffering mother's plight. They were joined in tribulation, and they prayed—prayed with all their might to whatever greater power they could invoke.
"Oka-a-a-y-y-y!" Tookmanian announced, a statement of triumph.
Courage and hope welled. The inmates bravely made eye contact with their fellows. The newborn baby's lusty cry was a clarion call for life, and collectively held breaths were expelled, forced out by joyous cheers. The older infants added to the bedlam with frightened cries.
Dawson appeared, finger to her lips. "Shhhh! It's a girl! Shhh!" she admonished, but she was smiling as she disappeared into the water room.
Buccari looked about. The realization that she was the only woman not involved in the birthing caused discomfiture, and she did not know why. She did not have time to ponder. Dawson, leather apron bloodied, burst from the curtain with two pots. "Fill up the water pot with snow and get it boiling. Quick! We need more hot water!" she brusquely ordered, to no one and to everyone. Mendoza and Schmidt hurried to obey.
"Is everything all right?" Tatum asked.
"She's hemorrhaging," Dawson muttered as she went behind the curtain.
In her hurry Dawson left the curtain partially open, exposing a forceful firelit tableau. Tookmanian, an expression of stoic resolve set firmly on his craggy features, bent over the exposed body of the mother, tense arms bloody to the elbow. A frightened Goldberg stood at the head of the bed, the raw newborn in her arms, displayed for the mother to see. Dawson, wild red hair tangled and bedraggled, stood erect, holding clean rags at the ready, bravely awaiting her next assignment. Fenstermacher, his back to the opening, knelt on the wooden floor.
"Oh, Leslie. We have a baby, Leslie. We have a baby," Fenstermacher sobbed. The little man put his cheek next to Lee's and held her hands. "I love you, Leslie. Oh Les, I love you so much. Don't leave me."
Chapter 39. Return of the Fleet
Admiral Runacres deployed his motherships in staggered columns, line ahead, with Tasmania in the van at two tactical spans, and Eire, carrying his flag, next in line. All active signal emissions, except for directional laser communicators, were suppressed. All passive detection systems indicated that their hyperlight arrival was undetected.
R-K Two, the home planet of the belligerent aliens, spun in its orbit on the far side of the system, and Rex-Kaliph, the blazing yellow sun-star, masked the fleet's approach to R-K Three. Runacres ordered a flight of three corvettes to probe the system's defenses and to explore the suspected alpha-zed planet.
After a three-day transit Peregrine One descended into a survey orbit. Two more corvettes stood off from the planet, acting as pickets and communication links for directed laser transmissions. Crowded in the corvette's science laboratory, Cassy Quinn's survey team intently scanned the planet with every passive means available. After ten orbits they had detected no radar or communication signals, alien or friendly.
"It looks cold down there," Jake Carmichael, the corvette's pilot, said over the science circuit.
"It sure is, Commander," said Nestor Godonov, Quinn's geological assistant. "The planet has an eccentric orbit. Practically the entire planet is experiencing winter conditions right now. It's very cold. The good news is that spring should be breaking soon."
"Tell Commander Quinn to find something soon," Carmichael replied. "We're a sitting duck."
"You'll be the first to know, Jake," Quinn replied.
"I better be," Carmichael said. "Good luck, Cassy."
"Thanks," Quinn signed off and pushed over to the master console, rechecking the emission scans. She cursed softly. "Something wrong, sir?" Godonov asked.
"No, Nes. It's just I wish something—anything—would show up. There's nothing here!" Exasperation was manifest in Quinn's voice. Her frustration generated a contagious despair.
"Come on, sir," Godonov replied. "It's the most encouraging planet the Legion has ever seen—alpha-zed beyond doubt." Quinn said nothing.
"We'll find them, Commander," Godonov said. "We've only overflown thirty percent of the planet. The IR target backlog is still building."
"Nothing but volcanoes and lots of those," Quinn sighed.
An alarm sounded. The officers jerked, gyrating in null gravity.
"We're being lit up!" Carmichael's tense voice came over the command circuit. "I have solid radar tones and repeatable signals. We're being localized!"
Quinn moved to the master console and verified the emissions.
"Roger, contact," she said over the science circuit. "Our systems are picking up pulses. We're definitely being painted. It appears to be standard search radar and not target acquisition. Source position is coming out now."
"Huhsawn, we think-ah your ship-ahs come back-ah," Dowornobb said.
Hudson had to concentrate on what Dowornobb was saying before he allowed the meaning to sink in. He had reconciled himself to never being rescued.
"What are you saying, Master Dowornobb?" Hudson replied, in konish.
"Your people are back, Master Huhsawn," Dowornobb said, grateful to speak his own language. "We have detected an object in orbit. Not a konish ship."
"Not a konish ship?" Hudson gasped. "Does Colonel Longo know?"
"I know not, though it can only be a matter of time. He has soldiers stationed in the control areas. Mistress Kateos is checking."
"I could try talking to them on the radio," Hudson said excitedly. The realization drove home. His scalp crawled. The fleet was back!
Hudson noticed Dowornobb flinch and subtly adjust his posture.
"Yes, you could," came a powerful voice—Longo's. Bareheaded, but wearing a burgundy Genellan suit, the officer cantered into Hudson's camp. Four soldiers armed with blasters and wearing full combat suits trailed behind. "But I would rather you did not."
Hudson tried to think. Why not? he wondered. It was the nightmare he had been warned of. He swallowed and stared Longo in the eyes.