Stardust Dreams (42 page)

At about three-thirty,
Gallant saw a figure of medium height hurrying toward the police line not far
from where they were standing. The person was wearing a tan raincoat, dark
slacks, and sneakers, and carrying a large umbrella, none of which was remarkable.
But when he or she attempted to duck under the plastic ribbon right past the
police officers, Gallant nudged Cherry.

She looked in the direction
he nodded in time to see two of the officers drag the person back behind the
line by the arms. Cherry couldn't make out what was being said, but the hand
motions indicated that the person did not have authorization to enter the area
and was frustrated as hell about it.

Cherry and Gallant watched
the person back off when one officer started slapping his nightstick into his
palm. The figure started walking away, but halted a few feet from Gallant and
Cherry to take another look at the White House.

The umbrella tipped back,
revealing an extraordinarily unattractive woman with a thick scar across the
bridge of her nose and another along her jaw. Cherry's memory flashed an image
of Honorbound. Without waiting for Gallants approval, she acted. "Excuse
me? Ma'am? Maybe we could help you."

Gallant squeezed Cherry's
upper arm twice, letting her know he was going along with her.

The woman took a step
closer, her narrow-eyed gaze darting suspiciously from one to the other.

"Hi," Cherry
said, extending her right arm for a handshake. "I'm Jane Doe of Channel 6
News."

The woman hesitantly raised
her hand, but a split second before their fingertips met, she. caught sight of
the thin gold choker around Cherry's neck that housed the universal translator.
The woman's hand instantly withdrew to touch her identical neckpiece, and her
eyes widened with recognition of the enemy. Dropping the umbrella, she took off
at a run.

"Wait!" Cherry
shouted as Gallant leapt over the plastic ribbon. She bolted under it right
behind him, but his longer legs outdistanced her in no time. She simply kept
running after them, knowing he couldn't spare the seconds it would take for her
to catch up.

"Would you care for
some assistance?" a gravelly, accented voice called from behind her.

She kept running as a tall
man in a hooded, nylon rain parka and aviator sunglasses caught up with her and
placed his hand on her lower back. The voice had sounded familiar so she
refrained from reacting violently, and when the man lowered his sunglasses to
reveal luminous, gold topaz eyes, she was certain of his identity.

"Falcon! I had no idea
you were here." His hand on her back somehow helped her pick up speed and
they began closing the distance to Gallant.

"You were not supposed
to know, but I have been keeping an eye on you… and him. Aster was
worried."

"She's okay now."
Cherry couldn't get over how fast she was running without losing her breath,
though she knew Falcon well enough not to be surprised at anything he was
capable of. "Where's Steve?" Falcon's wife was one of those few women
Cherry had felt an instant connection with.

"She and the children
are visiting her brother today. You may recall he works for the Treasury
Department here. I did not think she needed to be out in such inclement
weather."

The rain slick sidewalk
ended the chase when the woman attempted to make a sharp turn into a park and
lost her footing. The moment her body hit the pavement, Gallant dove on top of
her and held her down with her arm twisted up her back.

"Who are you?" he
demanded as she struggled to free herself.

"Jane Doe, and I'll
have you arrested for assault, you bastard! Get off of me!"

"I think not." He
looked up to see Cherry and a stranger hovering over them.

"This is Falcon,"
Cherry said quickly. "He's one of ours."

Gallant nodded at the man,
but immediately returned his attention to Cherry. "All right, love. She's
all yours. But be careful. I heard Illusian females bite."

With that reminder, Cherry
avoided touching the woman's face, and grasped her hand instead. A sec-ond
later, she recoiled as violently as if she had contacted a live electrical
wire. "Wow! Is she ever!"

"Let me introduce
myself, Commander Bessima. My name is Gallant Voyager."

"Impossible!" she
cried. 'The princess would be with you, not that… that demon child of Norona. I
know the real Gallant Voyager bears the two white stripes of royalty in his
hair." She twisted against his restraining hold in spite of the pain such
movement had to cause.

"Actually, Commander,
it doesn't much matter what you do or don't know. Honorbound and her troops
won't be joining you and the Illusian barrier has been refortified."

"
Liar
!"
she shouted.

"I'm afraid not,"
he continued, not sounding the least bit sorry. "You're the only one left
free now. And you have an appointment on an operating table in Innerworld. Cherry,
I could use that hand of yours, if you can stand to hold on to her for a few
seconds."

Prepared for the contact,
she controlled Bessima while Gallant pressed several of the little gold nodules
on his ring.

Seeing that everything was
under control, Falcon said, "I will advise the other emissaries that they
may return to their homes now." He gave them a mock salute and walked
away.

Putting one arm around
Cherry while gripping Bessima as well, Gallant turned the ring's opal one
complete rotation.

In the blink of an eye,
they were gone.

"Hold on, Rom,"
Dr. Xerpa warned anxiously. "Here comes another strong one." Delivering
a baby was not in her normal realm of medical services, but Aster had refused
to allow any other doctor near her throughout her pregnancy.

Propped up next to Aster on
the double-wide, slanted obstetrical bed, Rom squeezed his mate's hand as he
personally felt the same wave that contracted her abdomen. He didn't even
attempt to block it out. When it passed, he asked if she was all right as if he
wasn't experiencing every feeling along with her.

"Will you both please
calm down," Aster said with a laugh. "I swear, I feel terrific. Before
I came to Innerworld and was treated for it, I had regular menstrual cramps,
worse than these little twinges."

Innerworld's medical
technology hadn't been able to spare her nine months of pregnancy, but the
labor itself was about as strenuous as a jog around the administration
building. She had had the option of the totally painless method of surgically
removing the infant, followed by an hour of treatment under the healing beam. That
would have to have been done before labor began, however, and she was
determined to wait for Cherry as long as possible.

"You are now fully
dilated, Aster," Xerpa said. "It should only be a little
longer."

"No! Not yet. Not
until Cherry gets here. What's taking her so long?"

It was Rom's turn to laugh.
"She and Gallant only arrived from the surface a half hour ago with their
prisoner. You know she has to go through sanitizing before coming in
here."

"Can't they turn up
the damn beam or something? What good is all your damn technology if you can't
even get my best friend here when I need her. Damn it! I promised her I'd
wait."

Dr. Xerpa patted Aster's
bent knees. "I'm sure she'll understand. Get ready. You're going to have
to start pushing, and I'm afraid
this
is going to be a lot worse than
a twinge."

Aster didn't want to
disappoint Cherry, but the urge to push was too strong to hold back. Simultaneously,
she and Rom groaned and clutched the handrails as their daughter began making
her way down the birth canal.

Cherry burst into the
delivery room and screeched to a halt. "Holy stars, if that ain't a sight!
I hadn't realized Rom would be in labor, too."

"Your humor is not
appreciated at the moment, Cherry," Rom grumbled through gritted teeth.

"Don't listen to
him," Aster countered in a strained voice. "Doctor, you can deliver
our daughter now."

And with another long push,
a big, beautiful baby girl slipped peacefully into the doctor's waiting hands.

Rom, Aster, and Cherry
shared hugs and kisses while Dr. Xerpa finished her job with mother and baby. As
quickly as possible, she had the infant cleaned, wrapped, and snug in Asters
loving embrace.

"What did you finally
decide to call her?" Cherry asked, unable to take her eyes off the little
dark-haired angel.

Aster and Rom glanced at
each other and smiled before giving their joint answer. "Shara."

"Well, how do you do,
Miss Shara. I'm your Aunt Cherry." With a feathery stroke on the baby's
soft cheek, she promised, "You're going to have a wonderful life, kid. I'm
personally going to see to it."

Aster smiled at her
obviously smitten friend. For the moment, she forced aside her worries about
Shara's future as the first child born from the joining of a Noronian and a
Terran. There would be time enough to worry in the years ahead.