Progeny

As she lay in her crash hammock, Imala felt ill.

There were at least two reasons for that. One was that the Vagabond was accelerating at nearly 5gs, which would put a strain on any human body. The other reason was that by virtue of being two months pregnant, she was beginning to feel all the wonderful things that came with that – nausea, increased urination, fatigue…One of these things, she could deal with. Both of these things, she had to deal with, because she didn't have a choice for reasons ranging from the personal to the professional. Problem was that she couldn't tell where one problem began, and where another ended. Was the fatigue due to the increased gravity, and the disruption of the sleep cycle she'd had on the Gagak? Or was it that baby Bootstamp/Delgado was growing by the day, and making her tired? Or was it both?

She didn't know. That in of itself was enough to make her tired during the day (or what counted for the day aboard the ship), and keep her awake at night. Her daughter had been conceived in space. Her daughter would be born in space. Assuming they survived this trip, her daughter would never get to meet her father until she was four years old at best. And even if the Vagabond did take out the observer ship, they could return to Earth and find that the formics had won. China, albeit on a global scale. And while she'd spent a good deal of her professional career on the moon, she didn't have much faith in Luna's ability to support 8 billion people. Maybe less if the formics did some of the dirty work for humanity in deciding who lived and who died.

She shook her head – that was enough morbid thoughts for tonight. Breathing heavily, she got out of the crash hammock, sweating as the force of 5gs worth of acceleration kicked into her. She couldn't sleep. The Vagabond's crew had a routine that was meant to keep them focused, but even then, what was there? They were going after a single formic ship that may or may not hold the hive queen, which may or may not be vulnerable to the Vagabond's weapons, which may or may not even be in the same place by the time they reached there. Assuming that the IF's theories about the ship was correct, that it was situated above the Sol system to give it a birds eye view, then what was to stop the queen from seeing the Vagabond speeding towards it? Space was big, of course, and presumably the formics found it easier to track their own ships rather than human ones, but even then…

She walked through the ship's empty corridors, heading for the bridge. No-one was on guard duty, there was simply no need. In her correspondence with Mazer, he'd told her about the Battle Room, about the training of the marines for anti-asteroid operations. The ship's doctor would never allow it, but she'd have killed to have something like that on the Vagabond. Something. Anything to do other than to revise tactics, or watch the feeds from Earth. Out here in the black, there was only so much despair one could take. Of course, she reflected, as she reached the bridge, the black itself provided no solace.

"Bootstamp?"

She glanced at the source of the voice. Slowly – moving her neck too fast in this gravity could do a number on the muscles there. Course, doing anything too fast in this gravity could do a number on anyone's body. Hers. The captain's. Or even Ensign Zaglas.

"You're up late," he said. He was sitting in one of the bridge's chairs, not doing anything.

"Couldn't sleep," she said. "You?"

"Same."

Silence returned to the bridge, and Imala didn't say anything. There was precious little to say that hadn't already been said – what's your name? Got family on Earth? Can we win against the formics? Did you hear about how the IF screwed up this time? And so on and so forth. Imala had said what needed to be said, and got on with the job, such as it was. Off-duty hours were hers, whether it to be pondering the meaning of life and the universe, or standing on the bridge, looking out into the abyss of space.

It was boring.

She couldn't believe she was thinking that, but by God, it was boring. The Vagabond was pointing upward from Sol, the sun facing its posterior, but space looked the same in any direction. A sea of blackness, with no atmosphere to filter starlight. She put a hand to her stomach, thinking of the world her daughter would grow up in. A single ship in an empty sea, with nothing but pictures of the Earth and the father she might never know. Given that the child had been conceived on a non-IF ship, Captain Marios had no authority to terminate the pregnancy, but even then, Imala wondered…What was best? For her? For the IF? Even her daughter?

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Zaglas walked over, and Imala glanced his way, again taking care to not twist her neck too quickly. She didn't sense anything untoward from him, but, well, the Vagabond wasn't the biggest ship in the International Fleet. One of the best armed maybe, but it was still a crew of over a hundred men and women pressed together in a space of a few hundred metres. Despite the population controls the Hegemony had placed on Earth, human beings had a number of drives, and one of them was to squirt out babies.

"Nothing," she said. Her mind was elsewhere. Thinking of babies, squirting, and Vico.

"Come on."

Not necessarily in that order.

"Well, I've got thoughts," Zaglas said.

"Yeah, what's that?" Imala didn't particularly care, but she could stand to listen. She had little better to do.

"That the observer ship doesn't have the hive queen in it, and we're wasting our time on a wild goose chase."

She frowned. "That optimistic huh?"

"I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than unpleasantly let down." Zaglas shrugged. "Course, if it is the hive queen, and we take it down, then we get to be heroes."

"I think we're a bit far down the chain of command to enter the history books."

"You'd be surprised. Trust me, centuries from now, people will be making movies about us, not to mention books." He sighed. "Course, that's assuming that the human race even exists centuries from now."

Imala nodded and turned away. Pessimism was infectious, but she couldn't blame Zaglas for it. Not when she'd considered the same things. The things that kept her awake at night, along with the fear for her child. How she'd grow up. How she'd live on a ship with no-one under the age of 20. Children had lived and breathed in space for decades, but at least they'd done so with other children for company. She sighed, feeling her belly. It felt larger.

"I hope the queen's there," she murmured. She looked at Zaglas. "No, really. I want her to be there."

"Well, yeah – I hope she's there too, but-"

"She'll be there," Imala said. "Count on it."

Zaglas shrugged again. "Sure, Bootstamp, sure. See you sunside."

He walked off, and Imala stayed in place. Hands still on her belly. She could imagine the formic queen, the monster that had spawned hundreds of thousands of children, if not more. Had the queen felt something when Bingwen killed the lesser queen on that asteroid? Pain? Remorse? Anger? Did she feel anything for the 55 million people her colony ship had killed three years ago? Were humans animals in her eyes, or did she just not care? If she was on this ship, right here, right now, ovipositor and all, would she see a mother who was carrying a child, and would do anything to protect her? Or just an enemy, and kill them both, mother and daughter both?

She wanted to know. Wanted to know if the queen could even conceive of such things. Hell, she wanted the queen to feel them, so she could experience just a fraction of what she, Vico, and every parent and child in the human race had felt since a formic ship entered the Sol system four years ago and sparked a battle for humanity's survival.

Yawning, she headed back to her quarters. Her 'king' was far away. Her daughter was still growing. She was a queen.

And like the queen they were headed for, she would do anything to protect her progeny.

A/N

Admittedly took liabilities with how Imala's able to move on the ship, given her correspondence to Mazer in The Swarm. That said, I assume the IF ship dispatched to take out the formic observation ship couldn't move so fast that its crew could spend an entire trip in crash couches, so looking up what I could, 5gs seemed to be a good medium ground between struggling to move and going high enough to risk harm.