“Really?”

“Affirmative.”

Noelle searched her mind for other questions. “How far along?”

“Approximately one week.”

Shocked to discover it was from the wild BDSM night she’d spent with Drak, Noelle sucked in a sharp breath. “Seriously?”

“I am not programmed for humor.”

Well, maybe not that night. The computer had said approximate and she supposed it could have been the night before but that would be stretching it.

She didn’t know how to take that—because it meant if she’d escaped only a day or so earlier she wouldn’t be carrying Drak’s baby. Was she glad? Or sorry that she hadn’t managed to escape sooner.

“Is it … ok?”

“It is a viable embryo.”

Which didn’t actually tell her a damned thing beyond the fact that it was alive and, she supposed, growing. “Normal,” she tried again.

“It is not normal.”

If the machine had stabbed her she didn’t think it could’ve been more painful. “How is it not normal?”

“It is an alien-human hybrid.”

Noelle felt like taking a hammer to the damned computer for scaring her so badly! “So your assessment has to do with it being only half human?” she asked.

“Affirmative. It has a DNA strand that it half human and half unknown. It is not normal.”

The machine wasn’t designed or programmed to deal with anything but human physiology. It couldn’t determine whether the embryo was free of disease or defect because it had no data on Drak’s people.

“Would you like for me to abort the development?”

Horror washed through Noelle. “No!”

“It is an abnormal embryo—defective. And it cannot be repaired. It is lacking 50% of the DNA that it needs to be normal. It will not be an asset to the community.”

“You don’t know that.”

“If you refuse to abort when you have been informed that the infant will be defective and a burden to the resources of the colony I am required to send a report to the governor of the colony and also to the psychiatric department.”

Anger flickered through Noelle. “It’s a democratic government and that means I have a choice. And my choice is to wait until there is enough data to make an informed decision!”

The psychiatrist counseled her to abort and said that she would have to attend classes regarding the care of defective and possibly retarded children before she was allowed to make a final decision.

Noelle was so depressed when she left she had no trouble at all fulfilling her wish to climb into her own bed and cry her eyes out. When she’d exhausted herself, she slept.

Monica gave her a sympathetic look when she arrived home from work. “Was it that terrible? Do you want to talk about it?”

Noelle glared at her. “Who said it was terrible? I didn’t say it was terrible!”

Monica held up her hands in a surrendering motion. “You hungry?”

That instantly diverted Noelle. “OMG! I really hate most of the native food! I am so hungry for real food!”

Monica snorted. “Only you would call space rations ‘real’ food!”

“Well, it’s human food and I’m used to the taste. And the consistency.”

“Next question—eat in? Or go out?”

Noelle thought that over. She was really reluctant to go out. It wasn’t a very big colony and she was pretty sure gossip had made the rounds two or three times by now. There wouldn’t be a damned soul that didn’t know everything there was to know about her capture.

On the other hand, she had to live with them. She supposed the sooner she got out and got it over with the better. Eventually, they were bound to get used to seeing her and tired of rehashing it.

Chapter Sixteen

The arrival of a group of Amazons several weeks later threw the entire colony into high alert. Everyone, including Noelle, was stunned when the leader asked to speak to her.

She discovered when she arrived at the gate that it was a group from Jules’ tribe. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed Jules until that moment. Joy and excitement filled her.

“It’s Jules! Let me out! Open the gate!”

No one was particularly anxious to open the gates, however. “We’re waiting for the governor and his party to arrive,” the guard informed her.

“Listen you chunk of metal and circuits!” Noelle growled. “Those are friends, not hostiles, and I want to go out.”

The governor arrived. “You know these people?” he asked in surprise, his voice laced with suspicion and disapproval. “These are the people who held you captive?”

Noelle explained that she’d met them after she’d escaped with the child and returned him to his family.

Which left a hell of a gap in the tale she’d told when she’d gotten back and she could see the governor wasn’t slow to realize that she’d left out some fairly important facts—at the very least.

She was allowed to go out—under escort. She introduced the governor to Jules’ mother, Queen Niri, as the leader of their ‘clan’ and after a few minutes of fairly stiff conversation, and with a great deal of suspicion, the Queen and her son and their escort entered the colony.

Noelle finally got a chance to talk to Jules when they’d been led to guest quarters near the city meeting hall. They natives were invited guests and preparations for a celebration of the historic meeting was underway.

Jules, she discovered, had spent a good deal of time chattering to his mother about the ‘mechanicals’ in his father’s treasure vault and how Noelle had helped to repair them. This, she discovered, was what had led the queen to visit—no doubt because she was desirous of acquiring some of those treasures.

It wasn’t merely modesty that inspired Noelle to downplay her part in working on Drak’s treasures. They belonged to him and she wasn’t going to feed his ex-girl friend information about it that she might use against him!

Fortunately, the governor saved her from having to dig her way out of the ticklish situation with Jules’ people by summoning her.

That wasn’t a pleasant meeting. She was accused of supplying aliens, who were quite possibly hostile to the human colony, with knowledge that could be very detrimental to the success of the colony. In a word—treason.

“That is absolutely not true!” Noelle gasped, torn between anger and fear. “The mechanicals the child spoke of belonged to them! It was their technology to start with. And beyond that, absolutely ancient. Most of it didn’t work and even with the things that could be fixed there was no one who knew how it worked or what it was for. I didn’t know what they were although some of the things looked vaguely familiar.

“I put it in my damned report! These people aren’t what they seem. Some cataclysm threw them backwards. They were originally a very advanced race at one time.”

“A report which you have yet to complete and turn over!” one of the council members pointed out.

The asshole.

The governor studied her angrily for some moments. “If you can prove the veracity of that statement, I will consider dropping the charges.”

Noelle gaped at him, wondering how the hell she was supposed to do that. “What the hell happened to innocent till proven guilty?”

The governor gave her a look. “The lives of every colonist could be at risk ….”

“I didn’t actually get anything working except a recor ….” Noelle broke off abruptly as that triggered a memory. “I will allow limited—very limited—access to my PMAI. I will expect my privacy to be respected. There should be enough recorded to prove I did not give them any of our technology!”

They were really unreasonable! She hadn’t been back more than a couple of weeks and she’d been dealing with depression and all sorts of other emotional issues from her ordeal, damn it!

Mostly because she missed Drak so bad all she could do was whine about it.

Which was stupid, of course. It really didn’t matter that she’d left. They didn’t keep women anyway. He would’ve sent her back when it was spring and they hauled all the other women back.