A Christmas present for readers of Half Dead: Dogs of War, set in that slightly-alternate universe.
MONTH OF FROST, 20 A.E., THIRD YEAR OF THE NEW PEACE
[Azura, Southern Serano Ocean: 1450 hours]
Clayton Carmine had sired so many children by this time that former Delta members took turns attending the births, something Marcus was now regretting as he pounded down the tunnel that connected Azura's living quarters with the hospital complex.
As he skidded into the reception area, Jace's grim face told most of the story.
"Who?" Marcus asked unhappily.
"The mother," Jace answered. "But the babies made it." He rubbed a hand over his face. "Clay ... Clay had to choose."
"Choose?" Marcus knew what Jace probably meant.
"She was already bleeding pretty bad, and in a coma. Then the first baby got stuck and ... yeah. The docs could either do a C-section or stop the bleeding, but not both. Since she wasn't awake to choose, they asked Clay."
"And he picked the babies." Marcus was more than a little disturbed that when he pictured himself and Anya in the same situation, he wasn't at all sure what he would decide.
"Yeah. By the time they got the second one out, Alissa was gone." Jace kept pulling at the ends of his cornrow braids. "The kids are fine, but Clayton ... isn't."
"Where is he now?"
Jace sat clumsily on a hard plastic chair, looking much older than early-twenties. "Standing outside the neonatal unit." He tugged on his braids some more. "Hasn't said a word."
Marcus found the eldest Carmine brother in exactly that state: silent and motionless outside the glass wall dividing the hallway from the neonatal unit. The NICU staff were busily attending to the babies, but from the sedate pace of their work Marcus deduced that both infants were out of danger.
"Clayton?" he asked. Carmine didn't move an eyelash. Marcus put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "Clay?" The new father simply stared. Add a little drool and he'd fit right in with the patients in the psych ward. "Private Carmine!" Marcus said in his Sergeant Voice.
Carmine turned his head. Clearly he hadn't blinked in some time, because his eyeballs were glassy. Marcus snapped his fingers in front of Carmine's nose, making him blink reflexively.
"Marcus." Carmine said it like he was stating a fact, not greeting someone.
'Are you all right?' would be a rhetorical, almost insulting question. Instead Marcus dove right in with, "You did the right thing." In the minutes just after a trauma, there was a small window of opportunity for minimizing psychological damage.
Carmine blinked for a second time, more slowly. "Did I? Do the right thing?"
"Yes." Marcus tightened his hand on Carmine's shoulder to regain his attention when the soldier's mind started to drift again. "Just like I did when I left Michael Barrick to die so I could save Jace and Dom."
Carmine's dark eyes started to clear. "Jace told me about Barrick."
"Yeah. He was a hero. The real kind, not the medal-wearing kind." A squeaky wheel on the gurney bearing Alissa's shrouded body attracted both of their gazes. "And so was she." Marcus squeezed Carmine's shoulder again when the private kept watching the doorway long after Alissa's corpse had been wheeled through it. "Clay, she's a hero because she would have made the same choice if she'd been conscious. And she would never have forgiven you if you had chosen to save her instead of her sons. And never forgiven herself. Understand?"
"Yeah, I ..." his eyes went wide, a sign of adrenaline pumping into his system. "Oh God, her other kids!"
Marcus had momentarily forgotten, but Carmine had fathered three other children by Alissa. Three children under the age of five, who had just lost their primary caretaker.
According to the Repopulation Statutes drawn up by Captain Tremain, children conceived through the breeding program belonged solely to the mother. But if she died, full custody went to the biological father.
In the space of an hour, Carmine had gone from a single guy with no kids to a single dad of three. A tiny squall from one of the twins pulled their attention back to the neonatal unit. 'Make that a single dad of five.'
Carmine shoved the fingers of both hands into his curly hair, incidentally pulling his eyebrows straight back. "What am I gonna do?" He turned to Marcus, face still stretched almost comically. "Marcus, I ... Sarge, what am I gonna do?"
Marcus was grateful for decades of experience in analyzing and sorting multiple courses of action in mere seconds. "You're going to leave the infants here to be tended by the medical staff. You're going to go to the Comm Tower and get Anya. You're going to take Anya with you to the pre-school, where she will help you tell Alissa's kids what is going on. Then you're going to Alissa's place with the kids while Captain Tremain and I take care of the paperwork."
"I ..." Carmine looked like he had been lost along the way.
"Jace!" Marcus barked over his shoulder. The neonatal staff glared at him through the glass. 'Sorry,' he mouthed. Jace came running, eager for something to do. "Jace, take Carmine to Anya and explain the situation. She'll know what to do."
"Yes, sir!" Jace looked mightily relieved. The faith that enlisted soldiers had in their sergeant's ability to resolve any situation was sometimes unnerving. Marcus did his best to look like a champion problem-solver. Both men seemed less manic as they trotted off to find the magical lieutenant who would cure all their ills.
Marcus radioed the magical lieutenant and gave her the abridged version of events. Naturally, she took it in stride. "You're staying with the babies, I assume." She knew him too well.
"Yeah. Delta will take rotating shifts. They shouldn't have to be alone."
Over the next hour Marcus radioed so many people he wished he had two tac/coms. By the time the neonatal staff were satisfied with the infants' health, Marcus had food, shelter, clothing and housekeeping lined up for all five of Carmine's instant children.
A broad, competent-looking woman motioned Marcus into the nursery soon after he finished the arrangements. "You're standing in for the father?" she asked.
"Yes."
"The twins are over here," she said, leading him down a pleasingly full row of bassinets to a set labeled 'Baby Boy Carmine 1' and 'Baby Boy Carmine 2'. "They've already been fed with thawed—" she began.
Marcus interrupted, "I've arranged for a wet nurse from the Repopulation Program."
The matron brightened up. "Oh good! Breast milk really is superior to formula. We have frozen samples of colostrum on hand because of the invaluable antibodies in it, but a regular supply of breast milk will be very advantageous for them, considering that they are undersized, like most multiple births."
Marcus had been trying to avoid the b-word, and winced both times she used it. The matron appeared to notice this, because her eyes crinkled slightly at the corners. "Breast milk collected with a pump has the same nutritional profile, but breastfeeding is really the best way to make sure their facial muscles are properly exercised. You see, when a baby latches on to the breast—"
"That's quite enough, thank you, Matron," Marcus growled.
She managed not to smile, but just barely. "All right then. There's a pamphlet I can give you instead."
Full of diagrams and photos, no doubt. "I won't need it, since I won't be doing the feeding." He gave her one of his best glares. She smiled innocently. 'Why is it that women find this so funny?' he grumbled mentally. 'I'll have to ask Anya.'
The newborn boys were the same smallish size, had the same scrunched-up faces and wispy dark hair. "Are they identical?" he asked.
"No, they're fraternal. They were inside separate sacs, which means two eggs were fertilized independently of each other. Think of them as brothers who happened to be born at the same time."
Marcus knew the difference between identical and fraternal twins, but evidently the matron didn't guess that from his appearance. Not her fault, really: nobody did.
The infants were swaddled in identical green cloths and had white knitted caps. 'They look like pea pods.'
He didn't realize he'd said it out loud until the matron said, "Oh, they do! I always thought they looked like chubby caterpillars, but I like your description better."
Marcus's eyes narrowed. He didn't think they looked "chubby" at all, and was a little irritated at the implication.
The spark of temper was snuffed when the matron asked, "Would you like to hold one?"
Before he knew it, he was seated in a rocking chair with a baby cradled in each arm. The matron busied herself with attending to the other babies, glancing in his direction now and then to make sure he hadn't dropped one on its head.
The Carmine twins were a lot smaller than either Benedicto or Sylvia had been. They looked somehow ... unfinished. Like under-baked cookies. Marcus wished there were something he could do to make them grow. 'If only they were one of Dom's plants. Then I'd know what to do.' The Santiago children had been noisy, squirming bundles requiring the entire attention of at least one adult at all times. He hoped it wasn't a bad sign that Carmine's boys were so quiet.
"Ah, this must be the wet nurse," the nursery matron surmised, going to the glass door to let in a busty woman with a pleasingly fat baby snuggled in a sling around her torso.
Marcus allowed the babies to be taken from him, which left his lap surprisingly cold. He helped the wet nurse divest herself of the actually-chubby baby so she could take his seat in the rocking chair. Marcus had just finished setting the woman's baby down in a corner playpen when he turned to see the wet nurse had her shirt unbuttoned to the waist and was about to—
His immediate, wordless exit was spurred on by smug feminine laughter.
TWO WEEKS LATER
When Marcus met Carmine again in the same hallway, the private still looked slightly stunned, like someone recovering from a concussion. This time Marcus suspected it wasn't shock, but instead had something to do with the fact that there was spaghetti in his hair and he was missing part of an eyebrow.
"Having a rough time with the kids?" Marcus had assigned Jace to manage the Carmine-side of things, while he and Anya looked after the newborns-side. Maybe Jace's positive reports had been heavily edited.
"No! No, no." Carmine eyed Marcus like he had his finger on the Child Protective Services emergency button. "I actually kind of love it." He absently ran a hand through his hair, found the wad of spaghetti, looked at it without surprise, and lobbed it into a distant trash can like he'd had a lot of practice recently. "They're great kids and they need me, like I've never been needed. And Alissa ..." he shook his head fondly, "she'd already halfway prepared them for losing her and moving in with me."
"Smart," Marcus commented. "Considering how far we have to go before the planet is reasonably safe again."
"The thing is, Marcus ..." When Carmine stood, half of a plastic doll fell out of his torn shirt pocket unnoticed. He paced over to the bassinets with his newborn sons in them, back to the rocking chair, and returned to the bassinets before he continued. "I can handle three little kids. Kind of. With help." He smiled at himself. "Lots of help." The smile faded a bit as he looked down at Baby Boy 1 and Baby Boy 2. "I've been so busy learning how to be a dad that I haven't even thought of names for these little guys." He looked at Marcus with a furrowed brow. "I don't want to just pick something out of a book because I have to. Names are important." He ran a hand over the tattoo on his right arm. "Very important."
"I can arrange more help for you. Maybe someone dedicated to caring for just the babies, and you can look after the older ones."
"That's a good idea, but ... newborns are so much work. I mean, I've been going to some of the parenting meetings and everybody says an infant is the hardest age to handle. Well, until the teenage years, but let's not get ahead of ourselves."
Carmine's wilting expression made Marcus realize he was scowling. "What are you trying to say, Carmine? You don't want them? Because they're too much work?"
The private looked like Marcus was sighting down a barrel at him. "No! No, no. Not at all. What I'm saying is that if they're at home with me, I'll naturally want to spend more time with them than the other kids. And it's the older ones that really need me right now."
"Oh." The tension drained out of Marcus's muscles, and Carmine relaxed along with him.
"What I'm saying is, I kind of need to foster them out, just for a few months, until the older kids are more stable. The three of them are really sweet and they're enjoying having a dad around, but still ..."
"Still, they just lost their mother." Marcus knew what that was like. The full realization, imagining and accepting all the future moments that would never be, took a long time to finally sink in.
"One of the kids ..." A flick of Carmine's eyes said he didn't want to specify which one. "One of the kids said, sort of offhand, that they hated the twins, 'because they killed Mommy'." Carmine sighed. "I'm worried keeping them apart will only make the rift worse, but since I don't really know the kids, I wouldn't know the signs if ..."
"If one of them were thinking about actually hurting the babies." Marcus knew kids, and kids were inherently selfish. Selfish because they knew so little and had so little, and were fiercely protective of keeping both intact. He had a memory flash of Bennie pushing another toddler off a stool in retaliation for a stolen lollipop. Bennie had been utterly shocked when the other boy bumped his head and cried.
Marcus half-turned to look at the twins. 'Their heads are so small. And the bones are still soft ...'
"Could you take them?" Carmine's question smashed through Marcus's thoughts like a bull in a china shop.
"Take them?" he repeated stupidly.
The private nodded. "Look after them. For a couple of weeks. Or months. Or until the older kids are okay with it."
"I ... take them?" He tried in vain to pick up his shattered thoughts.
"You don't have to say yes now," Carmine hastened to add. "I realize you'll have to talk to Anya first."
"Anya. Right."
Carmine put a hand to the tac/com in his ear. "Hold on." He listened, head tilted away from Marcus. His eyes went wide. "Shit, I gotta go. Ginger just ran a kid's family drawing through the paper shredder. On purpose."
"Yeah. You go." More witticisms from the mind of Marcus Fenix.
He wasn't sure how long he stood there before the matron put a diaper bag over his shoulder and squeezed both infants into a baby buggy that had seen better days. "One of the wheels is flat, but it'll get you where you're going," she prattled cheerily. "I've told the wet nurse where to find you."
Somehow he got out of the hospital, through the tunnel and up the tower to their suite without running into anyone. He put the diaper bag on the floor, the babies on the bed and himself in an armchair. It only took a minute or two of quiet pondering to realize this task didn't intimidate him the way it could have.
Maybe it was the practice he'd gotten with Dom's kids. Maybe it was because babies liked him for some reason. But he didn't feel overwhelmed, or anxious, or out of his comfort zone. Interesting.
He hadn't forgotten a thing about caring for a newborn, as it turned out, but he only remembered to call Anya the same instant he heard her key in the lock. Marcus froze, then turned stiffly to meet her, holding a sock puppet in his hand like a smoking gun.
Anya froze too, but only for a moment. "Wow, Marcus: I send you out to get a couple of salt shakers and you come back with a matching set of babies."
"Oh yeah, I did forget the salt shakers."
Anya smirked, coming to inspect the shaker-replacements. "Yeah, you did." She touched one delicate finger to the sole of Baby Boy 1's left foot, and his toes curled around it like he was trying to hang on. "They've grown," she noted.
"Four ounces each," Marcus informed her, feeling inexplicably proud, considering he hadn't done anything to facilitate their growth.
"Hmm," she responded, not displeased. Apparently he was not in the dog house for these unexpected arrivals. 'Speaking of dogs ...'
"Where are Rookie and company?"
"Training," she answered distractedly. "Look at these little hands! And these little fingernails. They're so tiny!"
'Anya has seen their hands every day since they were born. I don't see what's different about them today ... oh.'
Carmine changed his mind so often about the boys' names that Anya finally gave up and started calling them Quentin and Victor. "For brevity's sake," she explained. "Baby Boy One and Baby Boy Two simply take too long to say."
The collective parents eventually settled on Quentin Anthony and Victor Benjamin on the boys' first birthday, and by pre-school the two could even write F-E-N-I-X at the end of their names. Legally. With flawless penmanship. And if Anya and Marcus called them Tin-Tin and Vickie in the privacy of their own home, that was nobody's business.
Merry Christmas to all us Gears, both real and imagined.