This was a terrible mistake.
Gathered with the other Big Sky would-be brides in the common room of the Intergalactic Dating Agency transport to watch their approach to the alien ship, Adeline Barlow wondered if it was too late to turn around.
How far away was Earth? On their journey, they’d sat through so many classes and she was sure she’d heard that figure, but she’d never been good with numbers. They’d been learning so much—galactic finance, interstellar law, cosmic theology. It was worse than all of high school and college finals smashed into one space cruise. And there was a reason she’d dropped out of Vassar after one overwhelmed semester.
“Mom? Mom. How much longer? Are we almost there?”
Well, there were two reasons she’d dropped out. Three, if she counted her ex.
She put her hand on Ollie’s head to stop him from bouncing into the other women. He’d know exactly how far away Earth was, but then she’d get a mini lecture on the mechanics of space travel, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and probably alien biology just for fun.
Alien biology for fun.
Oh, why had she thought that?
Biology for fun on Earth had been her first terrible mistake.
“Mom?”
With effort, she buried her worries. Ollie wasn’t a mistake; he’d been her silver lining when all the fool’s gold was stripped away. She smiled at him. “Soon, owlet. Be patient.”
Pushing his glasses higher on his stubby little nose, he snorted. “My patience is spaghettified.”
She ruffled his fine brown hair, trying to remember her cosmology—not to be confused with cosmetology, like astronomy versus astrology, as she’d been told by a certain very impatient seven-year-old. “Spaghettification is when gravitational forces, like a black hole, unspool material, even molecules, into a spiraling string of atoms.” She frowned thoughtfully, tapping one fingertip on her chin even though that light pressure sent a warning ping through her tensed jaw. “And I think there are meatballs involved? Maybe garlic bread?”
“Mah-aaaahm…”
“Aaaaahhhh,” she echoed. “Oh no, are you being spaghettified right now? I better pull you back together!” She hugged him close to her side.
“Mom, I told you and told you, nothing can escape a black hole.” He clung to her for one sweet moment, then tugged away. “Okay, I don’t want to miss the DeepWander with my own eyes.” He ran to the observation port, the window framing only blackness at the moment, ignoring the interactive touchscreen. Her little owl had always been more interested in what he could see for himself, not what other people told him.
Not what other people had tried to make of him: a prop, a justification, a weapon used against her. In fact, the only reason the IDA’s Big Sky outpost had allowed a single mom with a minor child to leave Earth was because of the harm caused by his own extended family.
Worries flooding back, she watched him regaling June with space facts. The other would-be bride had become a good friend on the journey, and not just because she seemed to have no end of interest in space facts. June claimed to be in a perfect place to become an alien mail order bride because she was from a tiny rural Nebraska town and knew most of the songs in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers by heart. Her optimism for this new start to all their lives had calmed some of Adeline’s fears.
For a while.
Why was it all flooding back now, when there was no way to escape?
Because there was no way to escape. Because being safe on the IDA transport with the other women had been like a mini vacation from her anxiety, and now that was over.
Except that wasn’t entirely true; the IDA had said they could come home anytime they liked. As if any of them had homes. Why would they have become alien mail order brides if they had homes of their own?
“Hey, don’t be mad at them. June was dying to know that space smells like burnt toast, and she’s so lucky Ollie was right there to tell her.”
“Sorry.” Adeline smoothed her expression into a smile at Kinsley. “I’m not mad at Ollie or June. Or anyone.” At least no one onboard. “I was just…” What?
“Say no more.” Kinsley smiled back. “I get it. You don’t have to go on.”
But she did have to go on; they all did. Go on the alien ship, go on with their lives, go on with mates from another species. “Are you as excited as June and Ollie?”
Kinsley’s smile widened. “Of course. Who wouldn’t be excited to find themselves a dozen galaxies away from Earth and about to fall into the many, many arms of a horny alien to be their dates to some sort of cosmic blue-collar ball?”
“The orcs have tusks, not horns,” Adeline murmured. Okay, maybe Ollie came by his lecturing honestly. “And two extra arms isn’t that many.” If a creature with that strange silhouette had stalked through her nightmares once or twice, its skin shimmering sometimes blue, sometimes bronze like a beetle… Well, she’d had worse nights.
As for the rest of it, the ball was the least of her worries. She’d had to attend plenty of intimidating social events when she was still a child herself, and worse while she was previously married, and she’d never had the faintest promise of someone willing to pull her out if things got tough.
But she wasn’t quite sure what to make of Kinsley’s rhetorical question. Although the woman had been friendly enough since they’d all first met in Sunset Falls, Montana, at the Big Sky IDA outpost, she didn’t share much personally. By her peekaboo accent, Adeline guessed she was from New England somewhere, but when June had asked, Kinsley had only said, “All of that is behind us now.”
Which was true enough. Unless they turned around.
“I see it! I see it!” Ollie’s piping voice rang off the common room walls, instantly silencing the quiet conversations among the rest of the seven women. “It’s the DeepWander. We’re here!”
Adeline exchanged wide-eyed glances with the others: Anne, Maria, Mary Louise, and Carmen, who had all become close companions by proximity and potential, if not yet lifelong friends. They’d be the only humans among the orcs.
They all rushed to the viewport next to Ollie and June.
She’d seen plenty of spaceships, of course—she wouldn’t have been a good mother to Ollie if she hadn’t—everything from Star Wars to NASA. Once she learned that aliens were real and alien mail order brides were real, she’d seen pictures of real spaceships, then finally the IDA transport in real life. But this… This looked alien.
While the DeepWander had all the sleek, high-tech lines she’d come to expect from science fiction and function, there were also strange angles, dark spears bristling in all directions. The spines glinted darkly in the lights of the transport, like one of the crystal-growing kits that Ollie had requested last Christmas—their last Christmas on Earth.
Her heart stuttered. Not at the sight of the alien strangeness, but at the memory of that last horrible holiday, hiding in a motel, that crystal set the only thing she’d been able to afford besides a Happy Meal.
Determination seized her. Their next Christmas would be good, dammit. Whatever happened next, she would make a happy life for her son.
She straightened, glancing around at the other women. “Shall we go to the hatch to welcome our new maybe mates?”
They glanced at each other, as if making sure they were all ready.
June nodded first. “Let’s do this.” With a smile that trembled only a little, she solemnly bumped her knuckles against Ollie’s when he held up his fisted hand, and they both flared their fingers wide, like little stars against the glittering shadows of the DeepWander dominating the view behind them.
All together, they marched down to the transport loading dock while the ships aligned and stood in a loose fan just beyond the hatch. They were all dressed in outfits she hadn’t seen before on this journey; she imagined they’d all saved their best for this moment. Would the orcs have done the same? Were the aliens equally nervous? But they were the ones who’d initiated this exchange. Did that give them all the power?
A faint pneumatic hiss sounded like mocking laughter as the expanding corridor bridged the distance between the two ships until a gentle metallic clang resounded through the hull, not quite a jolt. A cheerful chime announced the sealed connection.
The hatch opened to a lighted hallway, and cool air drifted over them. The breeze tugged gently at the cowled neck of her nice but not too nice, first-date-appropriate, single mom floral blouse—that she’d decided to pair with her best butt-fitting, high-waisted jeans and “holy fuck what have I done I’m fleeing through an alien spaceship with my child on my hip” cross-trainers.
“It does smell like burnt toast,” June whispered.
“I told you,” Ollie whispered back.
With one more glance at each other, the women started down the corridor. A matching doorway stood open on the other end.
“Why is it so dark over there?” Kinsley murmured. “Don’t like that at all.”
“Are we sure we’re at the right ship?” Maria asked in a tiny voice.
“You can’t rendezvous across a few million light-years without both sides knowing the coordinates,” Carmen said with Ollie-levels of certainty that Adeline assumed translated to some amount of accuracy.
“Orcs don’t see the same way we do,” he announced. “Maybe they just forgot to turn on the lights.” He took a step forward, just beyond her reflexive reach. “Hey,” he called. “Us Earthers use electromagnetic wavelengths from four to eight hundred nanometers. Otherwise sometimes we’re afraid of the dark. Some of us, just sometimes.”
“Ollie,” Adeline put a no-nonsense clip in her voice. “Come back here.”
At the end of the hall, the black square bloomed with a shimmering silver glow.
Ollie glanced back at her with a big smile. “See? Now you don’t have to be scared. It’s gonna be an adventure!” He spun around again and raced down the hall toward that beckoning light.
“Oliver!” Gritting her teeth—the IDA had given her a minor surgery they assured her would fix her TMJ pain forever; too bad they didn’t know Ollie—she hustled down the hall after her son, squinting against that sudden light.
Just as his bloodcurdling shriek rang out.