Maybe she’d get a chance to return after all this, but Empra wasn’t willing to bet on it.
She could feel the baby kicking, even now, tiny heels thumping against her gut as the gladiators took their positions, weapons gripped with lusty fists. Gaius was the fighter on the right, standing under the box of Vestal Virgins. Had Empra’s eyesight been limited by biology, she would’ve been too far away to see his face. Her Recorder equipment magnified the details. Gaius’s proud falcon nose turned into the ring, dark-as-earth eyes calculating his opponent. His calf muscles rippled against his sandal straps, ready to spring.
Empra’s heart swelled: sick, sicker, sickest.
And then it burst.
She thought it strange that she felt it leaking, wet and warm against her stola, until Burg’s voice buzzed into her comm implant. “McCarthy! Your vitals are spiking! Are you going into labor?”
Below, the fight had started. First blood had already been drawn—not Gaius’s, but the secutor’s. The crowd went feral at the sight.
“McCarthy! Answer me!” Burg shouted louder this time.
“I think my—my water just broke,” she whispered into her hand, and stood on shaky legs.
There was a louder roar. Empra didn’t want to look, but she had to. This time it was the secutor’s blade that had landed a blow. There was a bright smear on Gaius’s left arm, mixing with the fibers of his net.
“Get your hashing tail back here this instant!” Empra could just imagine Burg sitting at the Ab Aeterno’s Historian console, rubbing his bristly silver crew cut with an agitated palm. “Don’t make me come get you, McCarthy. You don’t want to see me in a toga.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” She didn’t want to leave, but Burg was right. She couldn’t have the baby here. The event would attract too much attention.
Time was not on her side today.
Most of the crowd was too riveted by the fight to pay attention to the pregnant woman stumbling down the bleacher steps. Two more blows had been struck by the time Empra reached the exiting arch. Her back was to the arena, but she could tell by the round after bloody round of cheers.
One last look. She could risk that, couldn’t she?
And there was Gaius, her Gaius, still fighting. His trident seemed a part of him. It was a terrible, wretched scene, but somehow he was beautiful in it.
Already dead, she reminded herself. It doesn’t matter if it’s a second from now or decades.
This didn’t make it any easier to turn away. Neither did the fact that the red-notched secutor had managed to slice away Gaius’s net and was backing him slowly, surely, into a corner.
“McCarthy, Doc says your stats are off the charts. Kid’s coming fast. You need me to come get you?” Burg’s question was low and steady in her ear.
There was nowhere for Gaius to run. His back was to the wall, dark curls splayed. The point of his enemy’s blade drew closer, closer.
Empra changed her mind. She couldn’t watch this.
No one should have to watch this.
“No, I—I’m coming.” She turned her back and stumbled away. Blinded by the pain of a white-hot contraction. Deafened by the roar of a gore-glutted crowd.
The CTM Ab Aeterno’s engine purred as Burgstrom Hammond waited by the hatch. According to the infirmary monitors, Empra’s contractions were crowding closer together, and judging by the cries that burst through Burg’s comm, they hurt like nothing he’d ever felt before.
“C’mon, McCarthy! Keep going. You’re almost here!” Burg wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth—the visual on his Historian screen was blurry with Empra’s tears and the field where their time machine was parked looked like every field surrounding it. His fist was white on the latch, five seconds from running to the Appian Way in his coveralls.
There was no need. Empra beat him to the punch, crumpling into Burg when he opened the door. Her tears dampened his chest as he carried her to the ship’s infirmary. Doc already had his sleeves rolled up, med-patches fanned out in his hand like a card deck. One was enough to fool pain receptors for an average wound, but Burg counted ten. After Empra’s next scream—a sound that cleaved everything around it—he wondered if even ten would be enough. They hadn’t planned for Empra to have her baby on the Ab Aeterno.
“We need to get her back to Central, stat!” Doc’s yell carried into the console room, where the CTM’s Engineer was doing last-minute landing calculations. “Nicholas, get us out of here!”
The ship lurched in response, engines propelling it into the aching winter sky. Again, Empra screamed—new life’s pain made all the louder by their comm connection. Burg pressed a hand to his ear, surprised not to find blood trickling out.
“Deep breaths! Hold tight. Just a few more minutes and we’ll get you to a proper hospital.” Doc applied med-patches to Empra’s arms as fast as he could, adhesive peels flurrying across the floor. They didn’t seem to help. Burg’s eardrum threatened to rupture as he made for the console room—an uphill incline to the ship’s bow—where Nicholas was hunched over the controls.
“Hades’s clangers!” Sky glared at Burg through the vistaport, its blue too bright for the future. “What are we still doing here?”
“Gotta get the right elevation or things could get a mite toasty.” The Engineer wasn’t wrong. Central—the crew’s home city, seat of the Central World Republic—sat on this exact spot some twenty-two and a half centuries in the future. If the Ab Aeterno didn’t climb high enough, its jump through time could send them careening into hovercraft traffic. “Trust me, I’m as ready to say good-bye to this year as the rest of you.”