A baby? Delta recoiled. “Cosmo, what have you done?”
His brother sauntered toward the pyramid, shoving his hands in his pockets. “This one”—he winged his elbow at Lindy—“said that she lost everything. I was going to give it back to her in exchange for you. You’re welcome.”
Delta stared at his matrix-brother. “This is the yurk’s stasis pyramid. Were you the one who initiated the hatching?”
Cosmo scowled at him. “No. I wouldn’t have exposed any more of our matrix to being hunted by our keyholder.”
Delta squinted back. “But this…”
“It’s for her.” Cosmo gestured at Lindy again. “I collected her genetic material and some from her expired mate.” He angled his head to look down at her. “You only wanted control of the Delta because you are lonely. Well, here is an unwitting offspring of you and your dead wife. I was going to trade it to you in exchange for the Delta, but now you’ve taken him anyway so I guess you don’t need—”
Lindy charged at Cosmo, one fist cocked back and her expression twisted with a rage that would scare even a fully activated shroud. “You asshole,” she snarled.
Cosmo wrinkled his nose, and Delta caught her before she got more than one stride. “Lindy, no.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind, his muscles seizing in sympathy to the deep shudders racking her, as if she too had blown off a ghost of her inner power. “You can’t fight him. He’s an Omega. Indestructible, deadly. And, yeah, an asshole.” He glared at his brother.
She stared only at the pyramid. “Is that…really a baby?”
“Shrouds do have assholes, but because we are so efficient with our energy, we do not excrete.” When they both glared at him, he shrugged. “I mean I am not shitting you.”
Lindy’s body bowed away from Delta’s, leaning toward the pyramid. “How?” The single word was broken.
Cosmo shrugged. “Your genetic code is all over the ranch,” he said impatiently. “Your mate’s was harder. But I found several of her hairs woven into the blanket on your bed.”
“You were in her bedroom?” Delta growled. Only his need to hold back Lindy kept him from pouncing on the other shroud.
Cosmo snorted out a breath. “Found your genetic material there too, CWBOI.”
Lindy pressed back into his chest, although her shaking stopped. “You’re saying that’s my child. And Amber’s.” She gave her head a hard shake. “But you only came out to the ranch a few days ago. This baby must be…” She turned her head to look into the pyramid, and in her profile, Delta watched the play of Earther emotion. Her clear blue eyes darkened as her pupils expanded with shock. And longing. “It’s impossible,” she breathed.
Delta wanted to strangle his brother—also impossible. “You can’t do this.”
Cosmo looked at both of them with obvious confusion. “It’s possible. I did it.” He shrugged. “But we can’t make the trade since you already imprinted. So—”
Lindy lunged toward the pyramid when Cosmo took a step in the same direction. “No. You stole my genes to make this baby. It’s mine.”
Cosmo arched one brow. “You left your genetic material lying around,” he pointed out. “And if you wanted this Delta, you shouldn’t have taken mine.”
“This Delta?” Delta’s bones felt weak—useless, as Cosmo had said—from the nanite efforts to regenerate and now the surprise. “Did you…?”
“I found a mostly undamaged Delta blank from the ship wreckage,” Cosmo said. “It was easy enough to add the dual Earther genetics and initiate the forced growth sequence. Since the stasis chamber was damaged, it’ll take longer. But then you three will have a baby.”
Lindy slumped into his hold. “Amber wanted a baby. I…I said I was too old, but mostly I was afraid of raising a child alone if she…” Her chest heaved against his barred forearms as she caught her breath.
He bent himself around her. “Don’t cry,” he whispered against her hair. “Don’t be afraid.”
She bowed her head for a moment…then whipped herself out of his grasp and sprang at Cosmo.
One mighty wallop of her fist in his face staggered the Omega back. He might be a cybernetically enhanced fighter but he was still subject to the laws of momentum.
With a cry of fury and pain, she took a stance in front of the pyramid, guarding it from both of them. Surreptitiously, she shook out her hand. Delta ached to go to her, to make sure she hadn’t broken anything on his brother.
Besides her trust and her heart.
But the wariness in her expression warned him off. Keeping his eye on her, he muttered to his brother, “We’re marooned alien cyborgs being hunted as slaves by a superior force, and yet somehow you managed to make this worse.”
“I thought Earther females liked babies,” Cosmo said defensively. “The veterinarian female only helped the Alpha because she thought the hatchling was cute.”
Delta sighed. Lun-mei thought Mach was cute. But he couldn’t explain the attraction to a matrix-brother who hadn’t felt the imprinting urge.
Turning to Lindy, he held out his hand. “Tell me your thumb was on the outside.”
She scowled at him. “I know how to punch.” With a quick glance down at the pyramid, she whispered, “I don’t know anything about babies.”
“You have cows that have calves,” Cosmo piped up. “Same. Mostly.”
Holding up one threatening finger to his brother, Delta took a slow step to Lindy. “Let me see.”
“I told you I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I want to see her.” He gestured toward the pyramid.
“Her…” Lindy swiveled to look through the transparent plasteel. “It’s a girl? But…he said it was a Delta, like you.”
Edging up to her, he adjusted the settings on the stasis field, clearing the nutrient fog a bit. “The blank Delta form doesn’t have a gender. Since you and Amber provided the genetic material, she’s all yours.”
Lindy put her hand over the transparent plasteel, staring down at the tawny-pink shape curled within. Delta had seen prenatal yurks all scaly and coiled, and he thought Cosmo wasn’t wrong about them being cute. This unhatched creature was not quite so aesthetically pleasing, and if anything, its vulnerability terrified him.
“She’s so small,” Lindy murmured, echoing his thoughts.
“Well, it wouldn’t look like much in your belly at three days old either,” Cosmo said, in a mildly affronted tone. “It’s not done yet.”
“I want to take her out,” Lindy said.
Delta wasn’t sure if she was ignoring Cosmo or didn’t believe him. “She hasn’t finished developing yet. The technology is made to grow an army quickly, but it’s old and broken. She safer here than almost anywhere else.” Except not being born at all, of course…
Lindy let out a short breath. “Then can we take the whole rig with us?” She gestured at the pyramid. “I don’t know how I’ll explain it to the girls, but—”
“No,” Cosmo interrupted. “It’s linked to the energy source here in the cavern. And once you take it out from underneath this veil, it’s possible the reclamation ship could see it and think it’s another inactivated shroud.” He gave her a cruel little smirk. “Maybe this gives you a reason to fight for us now.”
Delta glowered at this being who was supposed to be his brother and felt more like a monster. “She was already on our side,” he said in a low voice. “Because that is who she is.”
Cosmo snorted. “She’s your keyholder now in all but name. You can’t help but think the best of her.”
Lindy growled in the back of her throat. “He knows I’m unreasonably violent and want to punch you again.”
Cosmo laughed. “Yeah, but he likes that because he is feeling the same way.” He shouldered the blaster. “Leave the hatchling,” he demanded. “We have to find and stop the invaders before we’re all reduced to our component genetics.”
They went through Cosmo’s collection of salvaged equipment from the downed ship. Some of it—like the yurk’s pyramid—Delta identified as purloined from the Fallen A maintenance shed where they’d collected what they found over the decades. But some of it he didn’t recognize at all.
“I kept looking longer than you did,” Cosmo told him. “Chunks of our transport were scattered across multiple counties, and I’ve found pieces of other ships over the years. We’re not the only ones who’ve been lost on this nowhere planet.” He chuckled. “And I’ve borrowed pieces from other visitors when they weren’t looking”
Lindy shook her head. “I assume you mean visitors from outer space.”
“Your Earth is off-limits to most transgalactic stopovers,” Delta told her. “But there are a few organizations allowed access to help maintain your planet’s security until you are judged ready to join the wider universe. There’s an on-planet security force, a resource rights management group, the Intergalactic Dating Agency—”
“Intergalactic dating…” She shook her head. “Amber would say that’s exactly what colonizers do: show up and tell people what to do, take their stuff, and then want to mate with them.”
“How would she feel about the baby?” Delta watched her closely.
She sighed. “I think she would love her. How could she not?”
Delta rather thought that was how Lindy felt as well. But she hadn’t had the choice, because a shroud had taken that from her, just like he’d chosen her for his keyholder.
He found several pieces of under armor that could be condensed enough to fit her frame. “Without the implants and nanites it won’t be as effective as mine,” he warned her. “But it’ll offer some protection.”
“These other E.T. entities you mentioned,” she said as he helped her mold the armor to her body, “would they be willing to help us if this planet is supposed to be off-limits to invading ships?”
“The only thing worse than an unregistered reclamation ship checking a failing stasis signal to scavenge is the illegal cybernetic army emitting the signal,” he told her. “The security forces might be willing to issue a fine to the reclamation ship, but they’d destroy us even more readily than the ones who want to recover and resell us.”
Looking down at the tight black armor plate hugging her curves, she sighed. “I suppose it’s too late to pretend this isn’t happening.” She glanced up at him through her lashes.
He cinched the armor just a bit tighter, as if that would be extra protection. It took all the strength of his vastly fewer nanites to keep himself from brushing back a lock of silver-gold-and-iron hair that fell across her cheek. “If I could wake you with a kiss, I would,” he murmured. “If I asked you to go back to Strix Springs now and stay there until this is over, would you?”
She lifted her chin, that momentary glimpse of flirting shyness gone. “Not a chance.”
Maybe he couldn’t read minds, but he’d known she’d say that. Giving in to the impulse to touch her, he flattened his palm on the armored plate over her breasts. He sent a pulse down his nerves, then had to close his eyes at a wave of dizziness.
“Dammit, Delta. Did you just give me some of your nanites?”
He pried his eyelids apart. The pathways in her armor glimmered just faintly silver. “I haven’t regenerated many, and they won’t last long. You won’t be able to control them as I do, but they’ll give some extra force to the armor.” And he’d be able to find her for as long as the nanites lasted. “I still wish you’d go back to the ranch.”
“Not without Amber’s daughter. Not until she is safe from these raiders.”
He closed his eyes again, just for a moment. Not from weakness this time but from a sudden surge of strength that had nothing to do with his depleted nanites. It had everything to do with the determination in her voice.
“I’ll give her some of mine too.” Cosmo’s gruff offer sounded yanked from somewhere deep in his plasteel implants.
Delta opened his eyes to peer at his matrix-brother. “No,” he said slowly, checking with himself to make sure that his refusal was practical and not just possessive. “She won’t be able to make use of them, and I have so few left it hardly matters if I drain mine. But we need someone at full strength.” He gazed at Cosmo steadily. “And if nothing else, you have that.”
Cosmo met his level stare without a smirk this time. “At least.”
Of course he’d always known that Deltas were the least of the matrix. But since they’d never been activated, it hadn’t been real to him in the way it was now. Realizing that he had so little to offer Lindy and now the baby sent a wave of despair through him colder and more bitter than the worst Montana storm. How could he have believed he’d be of any use to her before, and now that the threat was real and imminent, he had nothing to give her except one-third of a vague version of himself, except even smaller and more helpless.
While she layered her outerwear overtop of the shroud armor and Cosmo finished rifling through his salvage for anything else of use, Delta snuck back for another look at the baby.
It was their Beta, destroyed in the crash landing so long ago, who would’ve been in charge of the creche if any extras had been slated for growth and activation. But Delta had learned enough during the few days when he and Mach had been in charge of the yurk’s failing stasis that he could see Cosmo had the nutrient fog turned up very rich as the Omega rushed the child to hatching.
Delta gentled the mixture. Yes, it would take a little longer for her to be born, but the near full-term baby could use some hardening off, and so could Lindy for that matter. And more practically, they needed time to take care of their extraterrestrial problem. Their terrestrial ones would have to wait.
The three of them gathered at the pyramid. Lindy didn’t look down again, but she rested her hand on the foggy peak. “So, what’s the plan?”
“Kill the invaders,” Cosmo said.
She rolled her eyes to Delta. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We go to the Intergalactic Dating Agency post in Sunset Falls, just a few hours from here. Even though the outpost was shuttered after the scandal with the stolen Earther brides, they’ll still have the infrastructure for defense and communications. We’ll summon the local security contingent and let them know about the unauthorized incursion.”
Cosmo scowled. “When I said kill the invaders, I meant we would kill the invaders,” he clarified. “We don’t need a dating agency, and we definitely don’t need a transgalactic security force who didn’t even notice the problem. We are the CWBOIs.”
Clenching his jaw, Delta countered, “Mach will agree with me. It’s the only way to make sure Lun-mei and Lindy are safe.”
Lindy shook her head. “But if there’s a chance they might try to take the baby if they realize she’s part shroud, then Cosmo is right. This is something we have to do on our own.” She curled her fingers over his forearm. “It’s Amber’s daughter. I can’t let anything happen to her. Or you.” Abruptly, she pulled back.
His nanites were all but gone, his programming in shambles. The true key to activate him was lost, maybe forever. And yet he felt every part of himself ratchet wider to expand the scope of his service beyond her, to her gone wife and soon-to-be daughter, to Sasha, Taylor, and Roxi serving at her ranch.
All of that was beyond him, more than his lesser skills could reasonably defend, but he wouldn’t let that stop him.
He let out a sharp breath. “We need to get back to the Fallen A and warn Mach. The ship will have a search grid set up from where they took my nanite cloud, and they might feel bold enough in this remote area to leave sensors to keep watch behind them. But they’ll also need to keep a low profile to avoid detection by closed-world planetary services. We need to avoid them and keep them away from any innocents.”
Cosmo grumbled something under his breath but subsided when Lindy slashed a glare his way.
Delta went on. “We need to bring the ship down. We’re lucky they are scavengers and not security, or we’d be worse off. But if any of the crew leave this place, they’ll take word with them that we still exist, unclaimed as far as they know. We’re worth too much and we’re considered too dangerous to leave alone.”
Lindy straightened beside him, her shoulder bumping his arm. “You’re not alone. You have me and the doc.”
“Not much of an army,” Cosmo muttered. “Even with the yurk. Not even if we count the baby.”
“Which we aren’t,” Lindy snapped.
“Should’ve pushed the growth factor harder,” the Omega sighed.
Before Lindy could start the war right here, Delta led them out of the cavern.
He didn’t want to count their army or their chances, not if they were being led by a Delta.