Chapter Text
Hell’s Gate was ready for war.
It wasn’t ready for a baby.
A woman’s scream tore through the medbay—raw, furious, human—cutting clean through the hum of machines and the distant thrum of the base.
Then another.
Then a breathless, shaking silence.
For hours, it had been noise and motion: clipped instructions, hurried footsteps, the sharp insistence of monitors. Hell’s Gate didn’t do gentle, but it had tried—sterile sheets dragged from storage, instruments laid out with frantic precision, med-techs working like they could build a miracle out of protocol.
And then, abruptly—
It stopped.
The room held its breath.
Not because anyone was calm.
Because nobody knew what came after.
A sound rose in the quiet.
Small. Thin. Offended.
A newborn’s cry—sharp enough to slice through the tension like a knife.
For one stunned second, nobody moved at all.
Then someone exhaled, like they’d been drowning.
Hell’s Gate didn’t have a maternity ward.
Hell’s Gate had a medbay built for bullets, broken ribs, and people who thought protocol was optional. It smelled like antiseptic, metal, and recycled air. The walls were too clean, the equipment too sharp-edged, the entire room designed to pretend Pandora couldn’t reach them through reinforced glass and sealed doors.
Tonight, the medbay felt… wrong.
Too quiet.
The overhead lights had been dimmed, casting everything in muted teal shadows. A cluster of scientists and med-techs stood around the exam table, clipboards in hand, as if paper could make sense of what had just happened. Their voices stayed low, urgent, careful—as if the air itself might report them for saying the wrong thing.
Outside the base, the night pulsed with bioluminescence—faint blue-green light bleeding through distant observation windows. The jungle pressed in like a living thing. Toxic air waited on the other side of every seal.
Inside, the baby made a small, hiccupy sound—more breath than voice—then settled into thin, offended little grunts, barely louder than the hum of machines.
Paz Socorro lay propped against the raised hospital bed, pale with exhaustion and stubbornly awake. She looked like she’d fought the planet itself and won by sheer refusal to lose. Sweat dampened her hairline. A loose white medical gown hung from her shoulders, slightly twisted from the hours before, and a green blanket covered her legs.
Her eyes never left the baby in her arms.
Then—because Hell’s Gate never stopped producing problems—there was a heavy step in the doorway.
Colonel Miles Quaritch.
He filled the frame as if he belonged there, shoulders squared, posture rigid, eyes already sweeping the room out of habit. He’d been briefed—of course he had. He’d known for months. He’d watched Paz’s belly grow and filed it away as one more complication on a planet that specialised in complications.
Pregnant. Fine. Not ideal. Not impossible. A logistical issue.
But seeing the child was different.
His gaze landed on the bed.
And stayed there.
The newborn was swaddled in soft cloth—scavenged, improvised—his face pink and scrunched with outrage, tiny mouth working as if he had complaints he couldn’t properly voice yet. A sensor band hugged one ankle, a pulse monitor blinking steadily beside the bed; thin leads disappeared beneath the cloth, as if the medbay couldn’t resist turning the impossible into data.
It looked impossibly small against Paz’s chest.
The room held its breath again.
One of the scientists swallowed.
“Colonel… the delivery was successful. Mother and child are stable. We’re—uh—running full panels.”
Another voice added, softer:
“It’s a boy.”
For a second, nobody moved.
Paz blinked, then let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. Her fingers tightened instinctively around the bundle.
“A boy,” she repeated quietly.
Quaritch’s expression barely shifted—but something in his stance settled.
A boy.
Not a complication.
A son.
He stepped closer, boots soft on the medbay floor.
His eyes swept the scene the way they swept everything: quick, thorough, assessing.
Respiration. Colour. Monitor rhythm. Paz’s grip. Distance to the door.
His mouth tightened.
He’d read the reports. Signed off on supplies. Treated the pregnancy like logistics.
Then the baby shifted—just a twitch, a tiny shuddering breath—and the room narrowed.
For the first time, Quaritch wasn’t looking at a problem.
He was looking at a person.
Paz watched him.
“Don’t just stand there,” she said, voice rough but steady.
“He’s… early,” Quaritch replied.
“No,” Paz said. “He’s here.”
A med-tech moved toward the baby to adjust one of the leads.
“Don’t,” Paz snapped.
The hand froze.
Silence.
“He needs a name,” Quaritch said.
“Already has one.”
That made him look at her.
“Miles,” Paz said.
The name hung between them.
Quaritch looked back down.
“Miles,” he repeated quietly.
The baby’s tiny hand escaped the swaddle and fluttered blindly.
Paz shifted him closer, angling the bundle toward Quaritch.
“Go on,” she murmured. “He won’t bite.”
“Everything on this planet bites.”
“He’s not the planet.”
The small fingers found Quaritch’s hand and closed around one thick finger on instinct—small and startlingly strong for something so new.
Quaritch went still.
The medbay went still with him.
For a moment, the most dangerous man on the base looked pinned in place by a reflex he hadn’t been prepared for.
“He’s mine,” Quaritch said.
Not a question.
A claim.
Paz held his gaze. “Yeah.”
A scientist cleared their throat.
“Colonel… we need to discuss custody.”
“No.”
“With respect, sir, this is unprecedented. He should be transferred to the science division. Observation protocols, sterile containment, environmental modelling—”
Quaritch’s head turned slowly.
“Say that again.”
The scientist swallowed. “We don’t know how Pandora’s microflora will affect a newborn long-term. The base filtration systems weren’t designed for infants. We need controlled monitoring.”
“He’s the first human born on this planet,” a med-tech added. “We don’t have baseline data.”
Quaritch’s gaze flicked to the vents. The sealed doors. The filtration hums overhead.
New territory.
A baby on an alien world.
He looked back at Paz.
Then at Miles.
“Give me a minute,” Quaritch said.
No one moved.
“Everyone out.”
The medbay cleared quickly.
The door sealed with a soft hydraulic hiss.
Silence fell—not clinical now. Personal.
Paz shifted slightly in the bed.
“This wasn’t in the handbook,” she said quietly.
“No,” Quaritch agreed.
She searched his face.
“This planet—”
“It’s contained,” he said firmly. “Air’s filtered. Pressure’s stable. Nothing’s touching him that I don’t sign off on.”
That wasn’t comfort.
That was certain.
He stepped forward.
“Give him to me.”
Paz adjusted her hold and placed Miles into Quaritch’s arms.
He took him carefully.
Too carefully.
His hands were enormous. Scarred. Built for rifles.
The baby barely filled his forearm.
Like someone had taped a peanut to a tank.
Quaritch adjusted his grip by millimetres, jaw tight, instinctively scanning vents, seals, monitor rhythm—then finally settling on the tiny face in his arms.
“You look terrified,” Paz murmured.
“This is fragile.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “He is.”
Miles tightened his grip around Quaritch’s finger.
Quaritch stopped scanning.
Paz’s voice dropped.
“Tell me he’ll be okay.”
That wasn’t a pilot asking.
That was a mother.
Quaritch didn’t look at her.
He kept his eyes on the baby.
“He stays with me,” he said.
Then, steady and absolute:
“And nothing on this planet takes what’s mine.”
Paz exhaled slowly.
For the first time, her shoulders dropped.
Quaritch looked down at his son.
“Hell of a place to be born, kid.”