Page 35 of Alien Engineer's Mate

"I donotmoon," Maax growled over his shoulder, but his hand betrayed him by rising to touch his lips again.

The warriors' laughter followed him into the corridor. His wrist bracer blinked with urgent messages from his engineering team, but his mind kept drifting to Eira. To their dinner, to the way she'd felt in his arms, to the promise of seeing her again...

He forced his thoughts back to the crisis at hand. The medical bay needed his full attention, not daydreams about soft lips and green eyes. Though perhaps, once the situation was resolved, he could stop by the nursery. Emily would want to see Grace again, after all. And if Eira happened to be there...

His wrist bracer chimed again.

"Yes, yes," he muttered, lengthening his stride. But he couldn't quite suppress his smile.

He had a feeling his friends would never let him live this down. Somehow, he couldn't bring himself to care.

The antiseptic smellof the medical bay made Eira's nose twitch. After years of mineral-sharp colony air, the sterile environment felt almost too clean. She shifted in the chair beside Kyle's bed, metal creaking under her weight. The bed itself could have held three of her son. Everything here was sized for warriors much larger than humans.

Her fingers found the rough calluses on her palms. The past twenty-four hours felt like a dream: dinner with Maax, his gentle way with the children, and that kiss that still warmed her cheeks. But reality pressed in now as she watched her son fidget on the massive bed. His breathing sounded steady today, but she'd learned not to trust good days. Too often, they turned into bad nights.

She glanced at the monitoring equipment surrounding them. The devices here made the colony's medical equipment look like kids’ toys. A display above Kyle's head showed his vital signs in what she assumed was Latharian script. Her translation matrix couldn't help her with reading, but she could guess what they said... heart rate, blood oxygen, lung capacity. They all seemed to be steady for now.

"The scanner feels weird," Kyle announced, wrinkling his nose. "Like tiny bubbles under my skin."

She was about to respond when heavy footsteps approached. Healer Kellat filled the doorway, his massive frame making the treatment bay feel much smaller.

"Good morning, Lady Coleman." His deep voice carried that slight accent all the warriors seemed to have when speaking Terran. At least, shethoughthe was speaking Terran. With the matrix implanted, it was hard to tell. Silvery strands like liquid mercury in his braids caught the light as he moved to check the readings, reminding her that he wasn't human. "I see the preliminary scans are complete. The results are... quite interesting."

Her stomach clenched. In her experience, doctors saying 'interesting' meant expensive treatment. "Is something wrong?"

"Not wrong, no." Kellat's fingers moved through the holographic display with practiced efficiency, pulling data streams into new configurations on the screen in front of him. "We've isolated the root cause. Your son's condition stems from a genetic combination, a trait you and your late mate both carried. Harmless on their own, but put together..." He gestured, and a complex DNA model materialized between them, spinning in the air.

Kyle sat up straighter, distracted from his nervousness by the shifting display. "What are those red parts?"

"Those indicate the affected gene sequences." Kellat zoomed in on a particular section. "In most humans, these remain inactive. But you inherited a copy from each parent. Combined with the environmental conditions on your colony—particularly the high mineral content in the dust—it created the perfect circumstances for Kyle’s condition to manifest."

She leaned forward, her mind latching onto the technical details. This was the first time anyone had explained the mechanics of Kyle's illness. The colony doctors had just thrown medication at the symptoms, more concerned with billing than healing. She studied the rotating DNA model. Biology might not be her specialty, but she understood systems.

"The dust storms," she said, putting the pieces together. "Every time one hit, his breathing got worse for days after."

"Precisely." Kellat nodded, his expression warming. "The mineral particles triggered an inflammatory response in his compromised lung tissue. Most humans can process such irritants but with this genetic combination..."

The memory made her bite her lip... Kyle when he was six, struggling to breathe after a series of bad storms. The colony's environmental controls had failed again, letting orange dustseep through every crack. She'd wrapped him in damp cloths, trying to filter his air while they waited hours for emergency services to respond. They'd almost lost him that night. Even now, years later, she remembered the terror...

"There were times..." Her voice caught, but she held it steady. She prided herself on never breaking down in front of her kids, and she wasn't going to start now.

"The medication didn't help. The doctors kept increasing the dose, but nothing seemed to work properly."

"That's because they were treating symptoms without understanding the cause." Kellat manipulated the display again, bringing up what looked like cellular imagery. "See these patterns? The medication suppressed the inflammation but couldn't address the underlying genetic sensitivity. And with the environment, Kyle's system was constantly being triggered into these inflammatory responses. Each exposure created more damage, making subsequent reactions worse."

Kyle squinted at the display. "Is that why my chest always feels tight? Because of the red parts in my DNA?"

"In simple terms, yes." Kellat's fingers traced a pattern in the air, and the display shifted to show lung tissue. "Your DNA tells me that your lungs react very strongly to certain particles. Things that wouldn't bother most humans cause your airways to become inflamed. Think of it like an alarm system set too high; it responds to threats that aren't really dangerous."

Eira watched the display cycle through different views of Kyle's affected tissue. Her technical training helped her follow the basic principles, but the complexity of it made her head spin. All those nights she'd spent researching treatments, trying to understand why nothing seemed to help enough... and here was the answer, floating in the air in front of her.

"I've seen similar mechanisms in other species," Kellat continued, his clinical tone softening as he noticed Kyle'swide-eyed attention. "The Tavkronian miners, for instance, sometimes develop comparable sensitivities to certain mineral compounds. Though their genetic structures are quite different, the principle is similar... their bodies overreact to environmental triggers."

The comparison seemed to interest Kyle. "There are other aliens who can't breathe dust too?"

"Indeed. Though they're much larger than you, and their horns tend to get in the way of breathing masks." Kellat grinned, surprising a small laugh from Kyle. She bit back her smile. He wasn't used to doctors actually talking to him and treating him as a person.

"Now," Kellat straightened, calling up a new set of displays, "let's talk about what we can do about it." His fingers moved through the data streams with practiced efficiency. "I think we need to take a dual approach. What that means, Kyle, is that we need to correct the DNA issue that's causing you to be sensitive to dust, and give you some medication to repair what's already been done to your lungs. How does that sound? Lady Coleman, do you agree?"

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