2233: Nativity

Bombs rocked the shelter, and the whine of laser fire rent the air. Erika clutched her distended belly and fought for breath as she leaned against the wall. She again cursed the name of the rat who had left her, alone and very pregnant, at the first signs of invasion. Couldn't be bothered to bloody well take me with him, could he? Erika seethed internally.

She glanced at the obstetrician lying on the floor. At least, what was left of her. She choked down a sob; Marisa had been a friend, one of the last. Forcing her eyes away from the corpse of her late friend, Erika gazed towards the door. There seemed to be a lull in the explosions above the semi-subterranean shelter, and Erika knew she would have one shot at best to get herself and her unborn daughter out of the burning city. Now was as good a time as any.

Erika started towards the door, her slightly blackened dress scraping against the wall. The explosion that had killed Marisa had only spared Erika because she had been ensconced in the scanning chamber at the time. However, the room had been filled with thick smoke when she was released from the chamber, and some of the ash had settled on the fabric of her clothes. Erika tried not to think of what the ash might have been not five minutes before. As she slipped out the door and began to climb the stairs, another bomb fell and the concussion threw her against the railing. She felt something warm and liquid spill down her legs. Terrified, she looked down at the stairs. A puddle of clear liquid was waterfalling down the steps. Erika nearly fainted in horror. Her water had just broken.

Her daughter was ready to be born.

Erika now had motivation to move faster. She couldn't well deliver a child in the midst of an active war zone, running for her life, could she? Ascending to the top of the stairs, she peered out into the street. It appeared deserted. Erika stole out across the pavement, her eyes on the grey sky. It was always grey and drizzly on the Terran colony of New London; perhaps that was why it had been so aptly named. But when Erika had arrived there with Damian it had seemed a paradise, someplace where they could build a life together away from the hectic lanes of the Federation. At least, until something happened that would have really tied him to this planet that Erika had come to describe in her thoughts as backwater: Erika had gotten pregnant. When the whispers of a Klingon invasion had begun to circulate, he had up and left, without so much as an explanation or even a good-bye. Bastard.

Thoughts of Damian slowed her pace and quickened her heart rate. This was the result of mingled heartbreak and a lingering infatuation with the man. Damian had sealed her fate, even after he was gone; the thoughts of him that had slowed her had left her wide open to the Klingon disruptor now pressing imposingly against the back of her neck. A deep, guttural laugh issued from behind her.

Erika got cold all over, despite the warm muzzle of the weapon against her skin. She began to shiver, realizing that the Klingon who held her at gunpoint didn't mean to kill her, or he would have done so already. She almost wished he had killed her, for if he wanted her alive, her fate was likely one worse than death.

"Please" she breathed, not sure if he would understand the word, and if he did, if he would pay any attention to it.

"You should be groveling at my feet, p'tagh," he growled in Federation Standard. "I spared your life."

Fear left Erika silent. The Klingon prodded her down the street, towards the main plaza. Once in the ruined square, he pulled out a communicator, and Erika chanced a look around.

Just days before, the square had been a happy, bustling commercial centre for the city, filled with stands of all varieties and people of all shapes and sizes. As a border planet on the edge of the Klingon Neutral Zone, New London provided a haven for all sorts of travelers, some savoury, some not. There had always been someone to talk to with an interesting story, no matter what the time of day or year. Now the thriving green trees were reduced to smoking stumps of charcoal, the fountain a heap of rubble and the stands unrecognizable lumps of twisted metal, wood and plastic. A sob stuck in her throat. So this was what war was like.

The Klingon was barking something into his communicator, his angry language nonsensical to Erika. He grabbed her arm and stood up straighter. The warm red light of a transporter beam enveloped them, and Erica whimpered in fear. To be a prisoner of the Klingon Empire really was worse than death.

The ship faded into view. Dark and utilitarian, the transporter room was far from inviting. Erika found herself dragged from the pad and out the door, as the Klingon barked into his communicator again. Moments later, she felt the ship accelerate to warp speed. Terror gripped her insides, and the child within her kicked restlessly, as though she too rebelled against their situation. Erika's fear extended to her daughter. What kind of existence was Erika bringing her into?

"Please," she begged at the Klingon, who didn't even spare her a glance. "I need a doctor, my baby… it's coming."

The Klingon's jaw tightened and he growled. Changing direction, he pulled her down a hallway and into a room that Erika assumed was the sickbay. It was dimly lit, and wicked-looking instruments lay on the tables. A female Klingon walked towards them, took one look at Erika's belly, and promptly shooed the man towards the door. They had a brief shouting match, which Erika assumed was the man attempting to stay and the doctor insisting that he leave. The woman won, and Erika was left alone with her, swaying where she stood.

"So, little qa'hom, your little brat wants out?" the woman said in thickly accented but perfectly understandable Federation Standard. Erika only nodded. "Well, let us begin the honourable battle that is birth!" the woman bellowed. "I am Akhil. What do they call you?"

"Erika," she answered, her thoughts elsewhere. "Why did they take me?" she asked, hoping that this doctor might be at least sympathetic enough to her plight to answer her questions.

She was. "They originally thought you would make an excellent gift for the captain once your child was taken care of," Akhil said as she directed Erika towards a bed and set about fetching her instruments. "But I talked him out of it. After all, who wants to have sex with a human?" She sounded faintly revolted. "So now they will simply make use of you in other ways. Perhaps as a labourer. I told them they were getting two workers for the price of one," she said, eyeing Erika's swollen belly. "They liked that."

Erika nodded, satisfied for the moment. However, she had other concerns about the doctor. "Do you… know anything about human physiology?" Erika asked cautiously.

Akhil paused. "There is no honour in learning about humans," she replied. "But I have delivered one human baby before, a prisoner's child, and it survived." Surprisingly, she walked over to Erika and helped her up onto a bed. There was the light of an impending battle in her eyes. "We will bring your tiny warrior into the universe. I promise you that."

Erika was strangely comforted by this.

The next few hours passed in a haze of pain, contractions and yelling for Erika. Akil's idea of pain relief was to scream at the top of her lungs, and did Erika ever scream. After a while her throat became raw, and Akhil brought her foul-tasting alcohol to "soothe" it. It burned going down but left her throat numb.

Finally she felt the ship decelerate into normal space through the fog of agony that cocooned her. The doors to the sickbay hissed open and two men entered. One was the man who had originally taken Erika from her home, the other an even taller man with long, thick hair and full battle armour. Erika guessed that this was the captain.

The tall man shouted at Akhil, gesturing wildly. Akhil bellowed back. Erika wondered idly if anyone actually spoke at a normal volume among this race, or if they all just screamed at each other. After a few minutes Erika discovered, to her surprise, that she could actually understand their words. They were speaking Basic.

"She's going now, whether her brat is out or not," the captain was saying. "She is a prisoner of the Klingon Empire, not a pet, Akhil, and she will go to Rura Penthe to work towards the glory of the Empire!"

"Then she will die: a lone human woman in labour would be devoured by those ingrates in seconds." Akhil countered the captain with a fierceness of will that seemed to even shock him. His eyes narrowed in rage at being defied.

"Then you go with her, traitorous dog!" he yelled, gesturing to the other man, who grasped her upper arm in what looked like a painful grip. The captain came towards Erika, who hastened to cover herself, but the captain didn't seem interested in anything but getting her to this "Rura Penthe" place. Erika knew she had heard the name before, and it struck fear into her heart, its meaning lurking just out of sight in the dark corners of her mind.

The captain grasped her in muscular arms and lifted her from the bed, walking towards the door. Erika moaned in agony as another, stronger contraction gripped her guts. She struggled against the captain's arms for a few moments before realizing the futility of her actions. He carried her behind his guard, who was dragging a spitting (literally spitting on everything in range) mad Akhil down the hall and into the transporter room. Erika's heart was pounding as the captain stood on the pad beside where the guard had tossed Akhil and she felt like it would leap out of her chest as the light surrounded her once again.

They materialized on a glacier. The cold cut through Erika's thin dress in moments, turning the sweat that soaked the fabric into ice water against her skin. She could almost feel the blonde strands of hair that plastered her face turning to icicles. The vista before her was a barren wasteland of ice and snow, the wind stirring eddies of snowflakes up into the frigid air. That was what jogged her memory. She wished she hadn't remembered.

Rura Penthe was the ice-bound Klingon prison planet. The one that no-one had ever escaped from, and where the Empire sent its most dangerous criminals to die.

Erika fainted. There was nothing else for her to do; it was freezing, she knew she would die soon anyway, and the pain had become overwhelming. By the time she fought back to consciousness, she was in a cave dripping with icicles. Sitting up slightly, the pain returned, full force, and Erika screamed. Akhil, who had been sitting beside the bed, leapt to her feet and into action immediately. She did not mention how Erika was the cause of her exile from her ship to the prison planet, for she knew that it was not the younger woman's fault. Akhil simply did what few Klingons had the will to do anymore: heal.

Another several hours later, with the help of a Klingon doctor, in a cave on a Klingon prison planet, Erika delivered her baby girl. The child had a shock of unbelievably red hair, a testament to her redheaded father. The little girl screamed as she was delivered, which Akhil later told Erika was a sign that she would be a great warrior one day. Erika hoped privately that this proved untrue. It was the furthest from what she had imagined for her child, and as Akhil placed the tiny, squalling, swaddled body in Erika's arms, she promised herself that somehow, she would get herself and her little girl away from this place.

"What do you name her, Aer'ika?" asked Akhil with surprising gentleness, and Erika found herself feeling glad that the Klingon woman was there with her.

"Ella," she said after long moment. "Meaning foreign. Short for Eleanor…"

She paused, looking into her daughter's bright blue eyes. "Meaning light."

* * * *

Thousands of light years way, in an environment that was Rura Penthe's polar opposite, a toddler sat in his room with his mother, playing and chatting idly about the eating habits of his pet sehlat, I-Chaya. The hot sun shone in through the window, and the heat of the desert summer would have fried anyone unused to it. But the little boy and his mother were accustomed to the heat.

Suddenly the little boy became very silent and still. His mother looked up in alarm; since he had learned to speak, her son had been nearly impossible to shut up. The boy sat stock-still, his elfin face scrunched slightly in curiosity, head tilted to one side, gazing out the window at the sky.

"Spock," Amanda Grayson said, worry seeping into her words. "What's wrong?"

"Mama," he said, finally looking at her, his face bright with excitement and as much joy as she had ever seen a Vulcan express. Amanda constantly marvelled at the speed at which her son had learned to speak; he could speak more eloquently than she could sometimes, and he was only a year old. "There's a new star in the sky!"

Amanda rose and went to the window, looking out at the afternoon sky. There wasn't a star in sight. "Where, darling?"

"Do not worry, Mother," her son responded, his face fairly glowing as he gazed at the sky. "I am the only one who can see it."

He ambled out of the room on stubby legs to go tell his father, leaving Amanda more puzzled than she had ever felt before in her life.