Page 59 of Time Traveling Space Bastards

FIFTY-NINE

BAXTER

I was nervous as fuck. I was the feral casual dater that bolted at the two-month mark, so I’d never actually done the whole ‘meet the parents’ thing. Fuck me. That worked pretty well for me on Earth, but it couldn’t be avoided now and the first parents I was ever going to meet were royalty.

I trusted Kuka that his mom would be cool with me being human but then I also trusted myself to shoot my mouth off if his dad was a spooge like Valtens. I wasn’t going to sit there and take it. My parents stole my voice and after I ran, I made sure it was heard.

I didn’t know why she was keeping him around because Kuka didn’t, but if she was in the kind of love with him that overlooked all the red flags, she might get offended when I reminded her of them in front of her court.

Still, I trusted Kuka and I couldn’t avoid this.

I stepped out of Big Daddy and took a good look at this planet seven thousand years later. It was still beautiful, at least in the palace. We were in some kind of garden and the plants were just as lovely.

I didn’t know what I was expecting from space palaces. There were places all over Earth with castles older than the country I was born in, but I’d never seen any of them in anything other than pictures. If this planet had been discovered seven thousand years ago, then I guess I expected the castle to look like one of ours.

This society was way more advanced than mine. I thought I had an idea with the time travel and getting to fly Big Daddy, but I really didn’t. The palace looked like some kind of concept art for a steampunk palace that was actually a lot more high-tech than actual steampunk.

It was gorgeous. There were all these theories about how the pyramids in Egypt were built. I didn’t know the answer, but I couldn’t figure out how anyone built this, either. Some of it was so ornate, it didn’t look like it was structurally sound, but I already knew that it was.

A gorgeous woman who looked just like Kuka came running across the garden and threw herself at him. Yeah, that was definitely his mom.

“Welcome home, Son. I knew it would work. There was a part of me that thought you might not come back to time travel everywhere and there was another part that hoped you did because it would make you happy,” she said, squeezing him.

Before Kuka could introduced me, we were joined by another man who was scowling at Kuka. They said Valtens took after his uncle, but I could definitely see similarities between Valtens and this man. He was in much better shape with better hygiene, but that was definitely Kuka’s father.

“Your brother isn’t back yet,” he grumped.

“He won’t be coming back,” Kuka said, squaring his shoulders. “He got stuck fifteen years in the past and needed me to take him home. By the time I found him again, he’d kidnapped my Velne to draw me out and made his intentions clear to kill all of us and take my machine back home with his own version of the events.”

“You found your Velne?” his mom gasped.

“You murdered my son?” his father growled.

“I defended myself within the rules of the contest. He would have killed her, but Enix jumped in front of the blast and took it. He wouldn’t have been able to protect me when he turned the gun on me. He was planning on lying about meeting the Devouring Mother and that she told him that he was supposed to go out and conquer all the planets in our galaxy and move on to the next. He would have destroyed our planet.”

“The defective one doesn’t look damaged,” his father sniffed. “Guards! Arrest him.”

A few of the guards stepped forward and pointed guns at all of us, including the queen. And they only needed a few because there weren’t many out here. Shit. Kuka’s dad was staging a coup.

I’d never seen Ghol in action before. Like, I knew he had all kinds of programming that Valtens added, but I’d only seen him destroy evidence before. Ghol just cracked his neck and the next thing I knew, all the guards were lying on the ground with their weapons away from them.

Ghol was blocking the queen’s body with his and his teeth were bared at the king. Damn. Ghol was fierce.

“What would you like me to do?” Ghol asked over his shoulder.

“What would you like to do?” the queen asked.

“I’m accessing the data. The king was plotting a coup. It’s deeply buried, but I found it. It was supposed to happen after Valtens killed Kuka. I’m sorry, but Valtens wasn’t a good man. Some of your guards were on their side. It’s more than these. I’m learning that I’m more than my programming, but I would really like to hurt him.”

“Then do it,” she said.

Damn. Kuka’s mom was savage. I was here for it. If my husband betrayed me, I’d totally want a cyborg to beat his ass. But, apparently, Ghol wanted to make it hurt first because he tackled the king and started pummeling him. The queen turned to me and smiled.

“Welcome, dear. You must be my son’s Velne. Please forgive the drama. I take it there’s a lot you need to tell me. Let’s do it away from here.”

The queen just stepped over Ghol beating the shit out of the king and I wanted that level of shade when I was her age.

“Did you make sure she can survive here before you brought her?” she asked.

“Yes. We can breathe on her planet just fine and eat the same things for the most part. I’ve brought seedlings back from Earth. I think our people will really like coffee and chocolate.”

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Your husband just tried to stage a coup.”

“Not my husband. Not really. I won my contest fair and square, but his family lost a lot of money. They used to sell devices to protect us from the black hole. I exposed that as fraud as part of my work with black holes and that was my idea for the contest. I wasn’t queen yet, but his parents made a huge stink about it.

“They were well connected, so my parents basically sold me to their son to keep them happy. I didn’t want to marry him, and I never liked him. It wasn’t really my choice.”

“Isn’t his family going to be a problem now?” I asked.

Because seriously, if she had to marry spooge to keep them happy, I was guessing they were going to be mad there was a cyborg beating the shit out of him in the garden. Torrek just chuckled.

“You’ve bonded with Kuka. He takes after his mom in every way. I’m betting she has a plan.”

“I do. But first things first. I’m Nizis. You can all me Nizis or you can call me Mom. I don’t care. I’m just happy you’re bonded to my son.”

“Baxter Holmes. I’ll have to build up to that. I didn’t have a super great relationship with my parents.”

Nizis led us into this room that managed to be both really high tech and borderline Baroque at the same time. It was gorgeous. Nizis arranged herself on a comfy chair and looked straight at Kuka.

“I know when you’re lying. I know you weren’t about Valtens trying to kill you and your Velne, but I suspect something else went on. You wouldn’t have come back if you hadn’t solved your quest.”

This was it. Whatever Kuka was about to say would either fix or ruin everything. And the first thing out of his mouth was that I was the Devouring Mother.

What.The.Fuck?