Author Note: two updates in one day? you bet. enjoy the chapter.
I sat nervously in a room waiting for test results that could either confirm or deny my current biggest problem. Was I hoping for confirmation or denial? That, I didn't know. I wasn't sure. On the one hand, it would be a new chapter in my life to move into a comfortable career position in hospital management, but it could also spell out dramatic complications for not only me, but the person I loved too.
I wasn't sure he deserved the complication of being a kind of permanently tied to me. Sangheili were different than humans in that the young they raised didn't belong to any particular father, but to a father figure. Would Thel hold to that tradition? Would I be forced to raise my kid in a way where he wouldn't know his father? I didn't know.
I rubbed my forehead. This was all too fucking much for my brain right now. I didn't even know if the blood test was positive.
"I have the results of your blood test!" The pretty nurse said cheerily as she breezed in through the door. "It's positive! Congratulations!"
Fucking fantastic.
"Oh...well. That's great." I said, trying to sound enthused but failing miserably.
"Oh, dear. Is this not good news?" The nurse said, her smile faltering a little bit.
"No, no...it's good news, it's just...complicated news." Christy spoke up from beside me. "She's thrilled on the inside, I promise."
The nurse looked at me. "Well, it must be way deep on the inside, then."
"Can I have a copy of the results?" I asked, rubbing my forehead. "There's someone I'm going to have to present them to."
"Of course! Here you go!" The nurse handed me a print out of the test results.
There it was, in big letters: 'Results: Positive'.
"Thanks." I mumbled, staring at the print out like it was an overdue electric bill.
Now I had two immediate problems to deal with. Getting out of this dumb situation I'd gotten myself into, and letting the father of my child know he was, well, the father of my child. I'd let him handle anything after that. I was good at that- foisting my problems off on Thel for him to solve them for me. After all, what else were lovers for? And he was so very good at it. Both the lover part and the part where he solved my problems for me.
"You okay, Kasey?" Christy asked, sounding concerned. "You look...droopy."
"Well, I'm trying to figure out how much trouble I'm going to be in for this." I said, wincing at the thought.
"It takes two to make a baby, you know." Christy said.
"No, not that. This whole fake rescue mission thing." I said.
"Oh, don't worry about that. We got your mom involved."
"You fucking what?"
"We got your mom involved. Sent a message to her to let her know you headed up a rescue mission with Lasky because he was the only one you can trust to get us back alive. So with her bludgeoning personality, you should only come out of it with a dishonorable discharge at the worst." Christy said, smiling. "We thought of everything. Even got Danny to stage a firefight with real corpses."
"Where did you get- never mind. Don't tell me. I do not want to know." I said, holding my hands up.
"Jesus Christ, Kasey. It's a family of criminals. What the hell do you think we do with our enemies, ban them from the country club?" Christy said, sounding disgusted.
"I told you I didn't want to know!" I said, waving my arms.
"Fine. Wimp." Christy rolled her eyes at me.
I sighed and stood up. "Let's go see if Lasky's alright. And if poor Karl has said a word, being right there alone in a room with his number one man crush. If not, maybe we can inspire him."
We left the room and went to go look for Danny, who would certainly know where Lasky and Karl were. Luckily for us, we found him nearly right outside the door.
"So? What's the verdict?" Danny asked, looking back and forth between us.
I handed him the print out without saying a word, opting for a lengthy sigh instead.
"So you really are pregnant with the Arbiter's kid. What a break." Danny said, raising his eyebrows and handing the print out back. "Are you sure that's not going to cause some kind of incident?"
"Oh, it definitely will. And if it doesn't, my mother will make sure it will." I said, cringing at the thought of how my mother would react to this news. Not well, for sure. She didn't think I was ready for a serious relationship, let alone anything else.
That was probably part of the reason Thel hadn't moved our relationship into anything official. So far, I was still just kind of this warm body he would see every once in a while. I had no doubt he loved me, but officially, I wasn't really anything to him. And it was probably my mother's fault. She'd been very vocal of her disapproval and her thoughts that I wasn't ready or deserving or old enough for him. Which hurt. But I'd done a good job of pretending I didn't care, pretending I was fine with the casual affair Thel and I had going, pretending I didn't want something more from him.
My whole life had turned into one massive fake after another. I faked being okay with where Thel and I were at. I faked having a good relationship with my mother. Faked being thrilled about an administration promotion. I faked a kidnapping. Now I was about to fake a rescue.
Everything was fake, except this pregnancy. And maybe that was the key to unraveling the web of pretense and lies that I'd somehow gotten myself into.
"You okay, Adams? You look a little...worse for wear." Danny said, frowning.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Why?" I asked.
"You look like you just had a fucking brain trip and then an earth shattering epiphany." Danny said. "What was that all about?"
"I kind of did." I said. "I'll explain it to you while we wait for Lasky and Karl, if they're not making out in a private room somewhere."
"I doubt it. Those two are like two teenagers who don't want to admit they like each other and the awkward tension is so thick you couldn't cut it with an energy sword." Danny said, motioning to a bench nearby. "Let's sit down."
I explained everything. Where my relationship with Thel was at, where my relationship with my mother was at, the doubts I was having about my upcoming promotion, all of it.
"And here I thought you were happy in love." Christy said, frowning. "But it's all a lie."
"Yeah, pretty much. But who am I to admit that I'm basically just the Arbiter's booty call?" I said, sighing heavily. I was doing a lot of that recently.
"Is that all he sees you as?" Danny asked, giving me a soft look.
I looked up at him, my gaze colliding with his deep green eyes. It was nice to have someone be gentle with me instead of yelling at me or scolding me. God knows I got more scolding than gentleness from most people in my life. "I don't know, to be honest. I haven't really talked to him about it."
"You should do that as soon as you get back and get through this whole thing." Danny said. "I'm sure you two can reach some kind of understanding that threads the delicate balance of his position and your love for each other."
"You sure are optimistic about that." I said, unconvinced.
"Well, someone has to be." Danny said, shrugging. "Might as well be me."
"Thanks, Danny." I said, meaning it.
"No problem." He said, standing up. "Now, let's go find those two chucklefucks and see if they need help getting out of being lost in each other's eyes."
Lasky had turned out fine. Turns out I'm a terrible shot and I'd just grazed him with the plasma rifle. So really, he'd just been milking in this whole time. Asshole.
We all made our way back to Christy and Danny's house to wait for the UNSC to contact Beverly. She'd sent a message detailing our dirty, rotten lie of a rescue attempt to Roland on Lasky's behalf, so now all we had to do was wait.
It was the waiting that was killing me. I had other things I wanted to do, things I wanted to handle, but I was stuck waiting on red tape and official channels.
But the stars aligned in my favor and it turned out we didn't have long to wait. The message came from General Nicolas Strauss of the UNSC Security Council. He requested that Beverly use on of the family dropships to rendezvous with a UNSC starship within UNSC space, somewhere away from Teirceira.
That was it. No mention of what was to happen, only arranging details of our ride back.
The dread energy in the dropship was palpable. None of us knew what would happen when we got back. The fact that a member of High Com had contacted Christy's mom personally didn't bode well.
We reached our destination point and saw the Infinity. Lasky looked like he was about to be ill.
The dropship took what seemed like forever to land in the Infinity's docking bay. My stomach seemed like it was colliding with every other organ in my body, I was that nervous.
We all slowly walked off the dropship and saw none other than Lord Hood and Admiral Serin Osman waiting for us.
This was bad.
Lord Hood wordlessly motioned us into a small room off to the left of where we'd docked. We all quietly filed in, including Danny.
Lord Hood glanced at him. "Why are you here?"
"I'm the one who handles the supply chain of materials for your Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine builds, I went through the entire situation with Captain Lasky and Dr. Adams, and I'm the brother of the one they went to go rescue. I think I deserve to be here. What's more, I think you'd like to hear my side of things, too." Danny said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. "Daniel Jamison, chief operating officer of the Dusklight Fairfield Corporation."
I had to fight to keep my jaw from dropping. Danny sure had balls of steel, that was for sure. But then again, he had little to no skin in Lord Hood's game, and a bold faced lie to keep up.
Lord Hood blinked, and slowly extended his hand to shake Danny's. "Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood, Chief of Naval Operations and Chair of the UNSC Security Council. This is Admiral Serin Osman, Commander-in-Chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence."
Admiral Osman stepped forward and also shook Danny's hand. "I had no idea that you were the COO of the Dusklight Fairfield Corporation. I also had no idea it was your sister that was taken hostage. No wonder your company called in UNSC involvement. I just wish we'd have known about it ahead of time."
"That was my fault. My bad judgement call." Lasky spoke up. "Adams came to me asking for help and I decided involving more people than was necessary would risk both the lives of Jamison and Ewing. I also felt that denial of UNSC help would completely shatter any and all friendly liasons between the UNSC and the Dusklight Fairfield Corporation."
"Oh, it would have. As it stands, I appreciate Captain Lasky and Dr. Adam's help. Any more people and we might not have gotten to them in time. I hope you won't be too hard on them?" Danny said, almost too smoothly.
This was insane. Absolutely, completely, up the fucking wall insane.
"Unfortunately, we still have to take some kind of requite action." Admiral Osman said, folding her arms. "We can't allow them to go without consequences."
"I understand." Danny nodded. "But consider this an official request from the Dusklight Fairfield Corporation for leniency on our behalf."
"We will take that into consideration." Lord Hood said, nodding back.
"You two may leave. There will be a debriefing later to figure out what happened." Lord Hood directed his comments at Karl and Christy. "Try not to get kidnapped on the way out."
"Yes sir." Karl and Christy said in unison, both of them saluting and getting out of there like they had the devil himself hot on their heels.
"As for you two..." Lord Hood shook his head. "Captain Lasky, as of now you are still captain of the Infinity. But we're revoking our offer of promotion." He turned a cold eye to me. "That goes for you as well. We're revoking the offer of promotion for you, too."
I felt a rush of relief. That was it? For some, that might've been harsh. For me? It was relief. I didn't want to be a hospital administrator on some godforsaken planet anyway.
But I tried to look as shattered as possible. "Yes, sir. Understood, sir."
"I can't believe you two would do something so reckless. You're both to take a week relieved from duties without pay to think about what you've done." Lord Hood said, a note of finality in his voice.
That was it? Wow, I'd gotten off easy.
Lasky hadn't, though. How embarassing to be stuck on your own starship and not be the captain for a week.
Lord Hood and Admiral Osman turned to go. It was only a matter of time before they finally discovered that the Chief and Vale were gone. I had to do something.
"Wait." I said, fear rising in my throat. "Before you go, I have something else."
"And what is that?" Lord Hood asked, turning back to me.
I took the papers out of my pocket and set them down on the table.
"What is this?" Lord Hood asked, frowning and reading the papers. "Is this...a pregnancy announcement?"
"Yes." I said, my throat dry. "I'm pregnant. And it's the Arbiter's."