Deni continued well enough. Her belly swelled a little, but she kept most of the growth close to her torso. Everything seemed okay; no thyroid or other hormonal issues, minimal morning sickness, baby in good position, very active and with a reliable heartbeat. I was still scared as hell at the thought of a battlefield delivery relying on bare hands and crude instruments with no modern backup. The "natural birth" people are idiots, if you ask me.
We caught every newsload from Grainne we could, looking for clues as to the situation in the background. There were very few reports from the Halo, and not enough information to tell us anything. Everything we had came from the surface. Jefferson was enemy territory, though the increasing damage we saw behind the reporters indicated it was still being disputed. Westport was garrisoned but not heavily, and a fight was still openly going on there. I wondered how my family was doing? Marrou was too small to resist the forces dropped on it. All in all, I estimated there were five million Unos on the mission. That was good news. Five million of them versus 300 million of us equaled five million dead Unos. Though they might take thirty million civilians with them. They'd already used nukes or KEs on half a million near military installations, and the economy was a wreck. People were starving because food could not be reliably shipped from grower to city. Part of that was incompetence and part security concern about weapons being smuggled in. And to be fair, part was our fault for sabotaging everything if doing so might kill an Uno. It was a hell of a fight. Even if we lost, they'd know they'd been hurt.
The Halo was harder to get intel on. The jump points were all under control of the UN, though for some reason I never discovered, Jump Point 1 was not being used. All flights were going through Caledonia and Novaja Rossia to JP2 and JP3. Either there were serious technical problems at JP1, or we still controlled it. I couldn't determine and marked it in my calculations as a likely friendly but unknown. The odds came out 70% in our favor for that objective. Most of the orbital industry was UN, and being run badly by what jokingly passes for "Unions" by their rules. Production was down what appeared to be 60%. Of course, much of that was due to sabotage by the press-ganged workers. The planetoids and outer Halo weren't reporting much, but those hardy miners would have to be taken one by one; they wouldn't surrender. There was every chance they'd sell their ore to the UN, however. While mercenary in attitude, their concern was likely more urgent and immediate: food. They wouldn't be happy, though.
The communiqués I got shrank in number. Every few days I'd get another one telling me to stand by, await orders, have gear at Stage 2 readiness, Stage 1 will follow. I sighed and complied. There was nothing else to do. I kept a tight lid on my urge to scream or smash things and trusted for advice and orders to a screen with some officer or other at the far end who might or might not be Naumann. I simply had to hope they knew what they were doing, because I had little enough to go on.
We carried on as we had, building up stockpiles of munitions a few precious kilograms at a time, then stashing them where we could reach them but deny them if needed. That's as tough as it sounds. We stashed some in a warehouse space we'd rented to ourselves using long-gone ID we could deny, but had to keep it a low enough quantity to avoid the aerial sensors picking it up. While being able to deny association with the hardware was good, the idea was to be able to use it. We couldn't push the issue. Some we had buried far out beyond our area of operations, where it couldn't be associated with us without long, careful observation.
We had a very good idea of when Deni was due. Kimbo cracked a joke that made me laugh hysterically and want to strangle him at the same time. It's a talent he has. "So, we know the date and time of conception. In the shower, from behind, facing north? On the bed facing east? All could be factors."
While I tried to figure out how to respond, Deni said, "Typical rich girl position. Facing Bloomingdales," with that beautiful, subtle, wry smile on her face. Situation defused, we all laughed. It stopped the nerves we all felt, at least for a moment.
It was later that week that she went into labor. Babies always arrive when it's least convenient to everyone else and the perfect time for them. I was asleep and relaxed, able to ignore the stress in between terrifying dreams. A disturbance jarred me and I came awake fast with a weapon in hand, as I always do. My brain sorted through unconscious memories and decided it had been a knock at the door. "Yes?" I asked softly.
"Boss, it's time," Deni said. She sounded a bit out of breath.
"Right," I agreed, rolling to my feet and grabbing my pants.
Everyone was up in seconds. Bleary-eyed, I took in the time from the vid screen; I hadn't done so in my room. I'd been too groggy to track. It was 0517 local. I'd slept for two hours.
Deni was walking laps around the room to hasten the event. Everyone else was moving smoothly, gathering the hidden supplies we'd need. I hit the bathroom, took care of business, scrubbed up thoroughly and came back out. First labors were often false. They were also often days long, resulting in a baby.
She was still walking at a good pace, clutching her distended belly and gasping, panting for air. She was obviously flushed and pained and that scared me. It was perfectly normal, but Deni is not normal. I forced myself to calm down.
At nine, Tyler went down to watch the office. Periodically she'd come back up. "No change," we'd report. Deni was sipping water and not eating, waiting for the ordeal to firm up, take shape and resolve.
At 1205 she said, "My water broke." It wasn't as messy as I expected; it was just a trickle. Still, things were starting. We put her down on her bed, built up behind her with thick foam pillows and waited to get to work. Babies are like battles. You wait for ten hours for ten minutes of panic.
Tyler came up as soon as she locked the doors at 6pm. "Are we ready?" she asked.
"Soon," I said. Deni was panting away, sweating, ashen-faced and tired-looking. I'd caught a nap during the day. She hadn't.
I reached up inside her birth canal with a gloved hand and felt. "Maybe three centimeters," I said. It was the oddest feeling. A part of her that had been a snug sleeve for my pleasure was now a swollen hunk of flesh, twisting and distorting as it prepared to release a burden larger than we had ever evolved for. It must have shown in my face, because Kimbo said, "Boss, have you ever done this before?"
"No," I admitted. "Only classes, but lots of them. And my share of trauma medicine."
"No real childbirth, though?" he asked again.
"No."
"Then I know more about this than you do. Swap places," he said.
"I'll be fine, just advise," I told him.
"I am," he said. "I'm the closest thing to an expert, and your ladyfriend needs you to comfort her. Swap."
Shrugging, I agreed and peeled off the gloves. Deni looked like hell, face stretched from pain, gaunt, pale, drenched with sweat and scared. Sure, she was strong. She was also passing a bunch of coconuts through a garden hose. She gripped my hand until I thought she'd break knuckles. "Thanks," she muttered, and went back to breathing.
"Two minute interval," Kimbo said. "Want to give it a try, Deni?"
"Sure," she said through gritted teeth.
"Okay," he said. "On the next contraction, bear down for twenty seconds. Ready . . ."
She hunched up and grunted, straining until cords showed on her neck. Nothing. It unnerved me slightly, but I got it back under control. It seemed so strange under bright lights with her all exposed. It seemed like one of those things that should be done in private.
"Going to be a bit longer," she said, interrupting my thoughts.
"No problem," Kimbo agreed. "We've got time."
Either she or the baby wasn't wasting time, though. Less than half an hour later, during one of his regular probes, Kimbo said, "Baby's coming."
Tyler took her right shoulder, I took her left. We each grabbed one of her knees. As the next contraction started, which we could clearly define by Deni's restrained scream, I yelled, "Push," and helped her raise her shoulder. "One, two, three . . ." I co
unted, Tyler and Deni joining me, though Deni sounded weak. At twenty, she collapsed back against our grips and we lowered her.
Childbirth with no trank field, not even drugs. No proper monitors, no neural tools to control the contractions, and only the basic tools should a Caesarian be needed, unlikely as that was. Still, at least we had sterile procedure and a warm place. How the hell did the human race survive all those Ice Ages, wars, civil strife, colonization eras, famines and local disasters?
It was time to push again. We helped her up, she clenched her teeth and strained as she had for that five hundredth leg lift in SW training, and we counted to twenty. Hell, I was sweating myself, and I was barely exerting. Poor Deni. I'd been throwing out jokes to distract her. I now said, "I told you we should have practiced with that canteloupe."
She snickered while looking at me in disgust, but for that moment she wasn't hurting. It was the best I could do for her.
"I've got the head," Kimbo said. He was sweaty, but calmer than I was, his face a relaxed mask of concentration. "Want to feel?"
I was curious, but decided I could do without. "I'll take your word on it. Good job, keep it up and all that."
He cracked a bare smile, nodded, then said, "Deni, we're likely to get the baby in the next push or two. Give it everything you have."
"Sure," she agreed. Her voice was still steady.
"Of course, it might be several more. I'm guessing, and it's in part up to the baby."
She cut him off by starting to shove as the contraction hit her. She lost count at three, instead saying, "Arrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhuuunnnnhhhh!"
And the baby came out. The head protruded first, and seemed to stop there. Kimbo gave a slight twist to release the shoulders, and suddenly had his arms full of live, slimy, twitching baby. The baby did two things upon arriving on the planet Earth—squawled and shit. I couldn't say I blamed it.
Kimbo flipped the concealing umbilicus aside and announced, "It's a little girl. Looks healthy. Stand by."
He grabbed two loops of Dacron dental floss, tied them around the rubbery cord and handed me a pair of shears. "You want to cut?" he asked.
"Go ahead," I nodded. He shrugged and snipped, wrapped the baby in a towel and stuck her in the makeshift incubator. Then he came back and finished.
Cleaning up after a baby is born is a disgusting mess. Deni squeezed and the placenta came out, looking like raw liver. Well, that's about what it is. There was more blood. Kimbo pressed on her belly and a tidal wave of urine came out. Deni felt none of this, her nerves overloaded from the ordeal. "Are we done?" she asked, breathless and panting still.
"Just beginning," I told her. "Baby's fine, you'll be fine, and we're back to work. After you lie on your ass and recover for a few days."
She nodded. "How do I look?" she asked.
"As if you lost both chutes and hit the ground face first," I said.
"Screw you, asshole," she joked. "How's the baby look?" she asked.
I didn't say, "Like Winston Churchill," even if that was accurate. "Just wait and see," I told her.
Only a few minutes later, Kimbo walked over, nodded to Tyler who was still washing off the baby with cloths, and helped wrap her up. He brought her over and presented her to Deni, formally and with what appeared to be a huge weight lifting off his shoulders. "Your daughter," he said. "Got a name ready?"
Nodding while eagerly taking the bundle, Deni said, "Chelsea."
"Jelsie?" Kimbo asked. He thought he'd misheard.
"No, Chelsea," she corrected. "The old spelling." She stared in at the baby's small, pinched face. She was smiling. Supposedly, babies are cute. I missed the "Cute" part. The baby still looked like Churchill.
Kimbo nodded at her comment as we all gathered around. It was that kind of bonding moment.
That's why the human race has survived.
We left Deni and Chelsea to recover while we gently brought the lights up, gingerly moved Deni so she could watch vid and then cleaned up the tools. I asked Kimbo, "Where'd you learn childbirth procedures?" He seemed giddy and exhausted, both at the same time. Everyone did.
"I delivered a baby on Earth once," he said. "In a warehouse, with only rudimentary tools."
It took me a moment to decipher it, and I gave him a Look.
"Sorry, boss," he said, "But you looked unsure, and were emotionally involved, and Deni did need you."
He was right. "Kimbo," I said, "if anyone ever doubted your qualifications as what we are, you've just proven them wrong." The man was an Operative. No question. I'd had few doubts myself, but there would be none now, and I'd quash any from anyone else. Taking charge, acting confident as things go to hell, never letting anyone know you're terrified, those are all good soldierly qualities. Doing those while pushing your commander aside as his exec and ladyfriend delivers a baby is one of the defining levels of worth, even if it's not in the book.
He smiled tiredly and said, "Thanks."
I tried to go back to sleep. Everyone else thought it was crass of me, but baby or not, we had a mission, and I needed rest to maintain my cover and run my ops.
No good. They were cheerfully loud, and I'd had too much excitement. I got back up and came through to hit my list of daily cover maintenance, local chores, local work and real mission.
Tyler cornered me at once, walking briskly over from where everyone was still gathered. "Boss, you have to come and see your little girl!" she said.
"No, I don't," I snapped, a bit too loud. She stepped back with a look of hurt surprise on her face. "Deni can handle the baby, she can call if she needs help, and we have work to do. Now get to it," I said.
"Uh . . . okay," she replied. Her expression was hurt and confused.
Whatever. I wasn't going to explain. And I wasn't going to see the baby.
* * *
Things calmed back down again slightly. Deni stayed hidden in back, doors closed. There was no real reason to hide the presence of a baby from customers, except that they might talk and we were paranoid. On the occasions when anyone asked about "Laura" or "the red-headed lady," we'd make excuses about her taking a leave of absence.
While she could handle the routine flipping of channels, chattering aimlessly on the phone with some acquaintance from the nets and do the real admin we had to have done, her state left us with three people to handle the visible work and the military mission. That lost us much sleep. Fussy babies cry at a frequency resulting from seven million years of evolution, that is annoying as possible, so as to get attention. That lost us all sleep. Deni couldn't go around the clock like that, and Tyler spelled her during the day, Kimbo at night. He was good with babies, cycling through the basics and delivering bottles, changes or snuggles as needed. His already damaged opinion of me sank lower when I flatly refused to get involved. "I'm running the show, I need my sleep," was all I said. There was no reason for me to waste time on an infant.
"You could at least cuddle your daughter once or twice a week," he said in disgust.
"It will distract me," I said.
"You really are an asshole, you know that?" he said.
I didn't argue. He did his job and did it well. That was all that mattered.
* * *
Not quite a month later, I slipped down to the library to check on reports and messages. There was the usual garbage and one that was official. It was entitled "hi son."
It was the mail I'd been craving and dreading:
"Hi well join you thursday. I think its around 9am your time but check to make sure Im lousy with time zones. Itll be good to see you again. Love mom."
Well, that was it. 0900 Earth Zone Six Thursday, several Earth-shattering kabooms would presage the collapse of a civilization. I had almost no assets, little notice and an exec with an infant. I've learned that when things get that bad, there are things you never do. So I didn't ask what else could go wrong. It would probably happen anyway.
In theory, all my team leaders had gotten similar messages, and several hundred bogus ones
had gone out to confuse any observers as to how many of us there were and as to our actual identities. To ensure the message went out, I would now start a tree. I would send out five different messages from five different locations to my five continental commanders. In twenty-four hours, I'd get back confirmation from one and only one source that the message had been received and confirmed by all, some or not at all. If it had not been received clearly, I'd have to reschedule to the best of my ability, or settle for a partial attack, or fake it. Lives of literally millions of people, including me, in several star systems now depended on me. And on the vagaries of Earth's commnets.
I was only sending out five messages, and would only get back one, because the more I sent, the more cover addresses I'd have to use, and the more likely it was that several hundred similar messages in one file would trigger an investigation. My people were relying on me as commander, I was relying on them as my unit. We all did this properly, or we all died. No pressure.
We'd thought about targeting military targets exclusively, but it wasn't practical. Much of their space-based facilities were unreachable to us without years to build cover. The juggernaut of the UN forces was spread across tens of systems, and most of what we'd have to hit were stations and ships. There was no way to do so. What we had to do was hit them politically, destroy their desire to fight, make their military too busy worrying about their homes to attack Grainne or any Freehold target. It meant attacking Earth, as the majority of UN forces were from there, especially command staff. It meant making them feel a greater need to chase us Operatives than take revenge on our system. We had to stick our necks and dicks onto the chopping block and dare them to chop.
But first we had to get their attention. That meant hitting civilian targets and hitting them hard.
Back at our warehouse, we made a last manic shopping trip, figuring no one could respond to an irregularity in less than a week. Baby supplies topped the list, as did additional prepared food for us. Cold packaged soup is no treat, but it can be eaten unheated. We had no idea what things were going to be like afterwards, assuming we survived, so we did what we could.