Teq couldn’t believe what he was doing. Not the cooking; he’d always enjoyed experimenting with the food packs even when the nutrition content meant just tipping it into his mouth was good enough. But to offer life advice to an alien mail order bride? One he had no intention of pursuing, like a priceless asteroid that would spin off into the dark without him.
He placed food for all of them at the counter, slightly less for the hatchling, as Adeline oversaw Ollie’s ablutions. The hatchling explained that he hadn’t actually been playing video games, but rather looking up what kinds of beings laid eggs in space.
“But I can’t really find anything,” he said, disappointment in his voice. “Everything says it’s too cold and dark for babies. Mom, are you going to have a space baby?”
Adeline’s utensil clattered to the plate. “Space…babies?” Heat bloomed under her skin on the wavelength that called to some primitive part of Teq’s cave-dwelling ancestors. “Oh, owlet… Is that what’s giving you nightmares?”
“Geez, no,” Ollie said. “Babies aren’t scary. And if we gave them growth injections or something, I’d have someone to play ghost in the graveyard with.” He cocked his head. “Although if we made the baby too big, that would probably be scary.”
Adeline murmured something reassuring to her hatchling, but Teq’s mind—like a wayward asteroid—had wandered off at the thought of space babies. Why was that thought gutting him like a void-viper’s fangs? The hope of another generation of orcs was exactly why Mag and Amma contacted the IDA. His antennae quivered as if from the reverberation of hatchlings racing through the quiet halls.
“I will play ghost in the graveyard with you,” he said.
Ollie and Adeline both looked at him.
“Oh, you don’t—” she started.
“Cool,” Ollie said louder. “Usually we would have to wait for nighttime. But it’s always dark in space, right?”
“Unless you are orbiting a star,” Teq noted. “Then it’s always day. At least on one side of the ship.”
Ollie laughed. “I love space.”
When Ollie raced back to his quarters because “I gotta get something,” Adeline said softly to Teq, “Really, you don’t need to do this. I know you aren’t looking for…for feelings.”
“It’s time for uroondu anyway,” he said. “But also, I am a crusher, and part of that means I am in charge of protecting this ship, not just during collection and extraction, but always. If there is something strange happening to your hatchling, I will stop it.” He lowered his voice. “And if something is trying to make him afraid, I will make them know six times the fear.”
She gazed up at him, the stark dread in her eyes stabbing through him. “You think someone is doing this to Ollie on purpose?”
“You and your hatchling are safe on the DeepWander,” he swore. “I will see to that.”
He thought maybe she would refuse to leave their quarters, but when Ollie raced back with a small sack in his arms, she said nothing.
“This is my special adventure backpack,” Ollie explained. “Mom made it for me cuz she said if we ever had to leave home because of an emergency like an earthquake or a flood or…or anything, we would be okay and could help other people too.” He looked up—and up—at Teq. “I guess that’s why we’re here, huh? Because we had to have a special adventure, but we can also help you cuz Mom knows all about big fancy parties like the Luster. She’s practically a princess, ya know.” He rummaged through the pack. “Okay then. Got my flashlight. Let’s play!”
After Oliver explained the rules of the game, Teq suggested the gather-hall as the graveyard where they could hide and hunt in the many nooks—while still being safely contained.
Oliver agreed with enthusiasm. “I’ll be the ghost first,” he said when they reached the hall. “You and Mom will have to find me, and then I have to catch you before you make it back to home base. I have the datpad in my special adventure backpack, so you can call me, just in case you aren’t good at finding. Once you know how to play, we can see if June wants to play too.”
“We will do our best,” Teq promised.
When he darted off, Adeline took one step after him. But she was already stopping even as Teq reached out to snag her hand. The memory of her mere five fingers pressed into his bigger hand still lingered from before lunch, and he wasn’t sure why he needed to reinforce that sensation.
“I will not burden him with my worries,” she whispered. “I will hold all the fear and ugliness apart from him. The only ghosts he will ever know are the friendly ones.”
“He can’t get lost,” Teq murmured. “We are on a ship in the middle of space.”
“I know that. Believe me, I know,” she said. “So why can’t I convince myself?”
“If it would help, I will take you with me the next time we spacewalk to an asteroid.”
After a startled silence, a breath of that Earther laugh emerged from her. The sound tickled his antennae, and the spark in her dark eyes was like the warmth of a distant star getting closer. “I’d be terrified,” she said. “But I would like to see what you do, or maybe more like see what I’ve gotten myself into.”
“It’s worth seeing,” he assured her. “To catch a rock that’s been tumbling through space for eons, to reveal the treasure inside it. And even if there’s nothing, seeing in all that darkness an infinite number of chances to try again.”
She blinked up at him, the corner of her mouth curling. “Why, Crusher Teq, I believe you are a little bit of a poet.”
He tilted his head. “All orcs are a little bit poet. What else can you do in the dark?”
Again, that strange, enticing heat flashed across her cheeks. “What else… Oh, we can look for a ghost, I guess.” She scuttled off in the direction her hatchling had gone, calling, “Twelve o’clock midnight! Hope I see a ghost tonight!”
Bemused, Teq followed.
It wasn’t hard to know where Oliver had gone, of course, considering his heat trail lingered and he was whispering, “Don’t be scared. It’s not that cold and dark anymore.” Teq’s chest tightened at the thought of the hatchling trying to comfort himself, even though he’d chosen to hide. He wanted to go to the little Earther right away, to add his bigger voice to the reassurance.
But that wasn’t the point of the game, was it? They were practicing to be clever and courageous and committed, all good orc attributes. So he followed the rules and pretended he didn’t know where Oliver was, the same way Adeline mused aloud, “Where could that pesky ghost be? Maybe it’s invisible. Maybe it floated all the way to the sky…er, no, not that far, probably.”
As they searched through the nooks and crannies of the salvaged stone, her voice echoed in the empty hall.
Empty?
Teq grabbed her hand again, not just because he wanted to touch her. “Adeline,” he said softly. “Stop.”
She peered up at him. “It’s just part of the game.” But then she fell silent, eyes widening in concern. “What is it?”
“Oliver isn’t in the hall.”
“What? But we said this is the graveyard…” She gulped back the last word.
“Apparently someone isn’t playing by the rules.” He kept hold of her hand. “Come.”
“We have to find him!”
“I will.” He tugged her quickly through the hall. The gather-hall had many access points—as any place to gather should have—which meant Ollie could have slipped out anywhere. Since the heat trail of the hatchling’s little body had faded, Teq checked the datpad on his lower wrist. “He’s in one of the service corridors.” The corridors provided access to the ship’s systems and weren’t sized comfortably for orcs, but for a little Earther… “It is a good hiding place.”
“There will be no hiding from the long talk we are going to have about following the rules,” she growled.
“It’s a special adventure,” he reassured her.
“This is a working ship,” she countered. “I can’t even count the number of ways he could get hurt.”
Since that was true enough—and worse, the datpad signal showed Ollie moving toward the processing bays with, of course, all the heaviest equipment—Teq didn’t answer, just sped up. When Adeline started to fall behind his longer stride, he swept her up against his side, anchoring her there easily with two arms.
She made a little noise but didn’t object, and he was achingly aware of her softness, holding her so carefully.
How could she be so bold, venturing into the dangers of space, when she was so soft?
To distract himself from the sensation, he grumbled, “How does one little hatchling move so quickly?”
“Welcome to the mysteries of parenthood,” she muttered back. “Sometimes you wonder if they’re trying to find every danger.” Her arms were so short and supple compared to his, but when she tightened her grip around his neck, he thought she might choke him. “I wanted him to never worry, not be afraid like I was. But not like this.”
“He can’t get into the ore processing area,” Teq reassured her. “There’s a special code. So he’ll probably just be waiting outside the door.” As they raced around the corner, they saw the bay access gaping wide.
“There is another code to get through the inner door,” Teq added.
But the inner door was slid open too, with the darkness of the bay full of heavy equipment beyond. Adeline struggled against his hold, and reluctantly he put her down, careful to stay right on her heels as she bolted into the bay.
“Oliver!” Her cry echoed in the empty darkness.
Teq cursed under his breath. If the fortune had gone missing…
He did not want his earlier suspicions about the Earthers to be true.
Perhaps Oliver was not a hatchling. Maybe he was a very tiny saboteur, his partners in crime cleverly manipulating the orcs’ longing for wife-mates and family, for a chance at a better life, a shared life.
The fortune was right where he’d seen it last, dull under the lights. And though Oliver was standing right in front of it, his small, fragile shape silhouetted by the glow, Adeline never so much as glanced at the valuable rock as she swept him into her arms. “Oliver Sebastian Barlow. You are in big trouble, mister. You were supposed to stay in the gather-hall.”
He patted her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said sweetly. “I heard someone else say they wanted to be the ghost to play with us. So I came here to find them.” He craned his neck to look over his shoulder. “I told you it’s not cold and dark and lonely anymore.”
Teq followed the hatchling’s gaze, but there was nothing in the empty bay. Nothing except the rock.
“Oliver,” Adeline said slowly, “who are you talking to?”
He waved one small hand. “My new friend. That rock.”
“Asteroid fragments don’t talk,” Teq said.
Oliver squinted at him. “Are you sure? Have you met them all?”
Adeline made a little noise in the back of her throat that didn’t quite sound like an Earther laugh. “Oliver, don’t be rude,” she said through that little quiver.
“He’s not being rude. The rock was talking. I heard it.” Kinsley appeared around the other side of the asteroid chunk.
Teq stiffened. “How did you get in here?” he demanded. And how had he missed her presence? He’d been too focused on Oliver. “Did you unseal the hatches?”
He knew his suspicions were right when Kinsley looked away from him, her jaw cranking to one side. “I heard something calling from in here.”
“So you broke into a secured facility?” Teq crossed all his arms over his thorax. He’d seen how Adeline wasn’t entirely comfortable around the other Earther female. “This is how you honor the IDA contract of connection and communication?”
Kinsley hunched, making herself smaller. “I had to,” she whispered. “I had to make sure I wasn’t…losing it again. Anyway, it wasn’t that hard.”
“What is it saying now?” Adeline asked Ollie.
He squirmed to get down, and she let him slide to his feet, although she kept a hold of his hand. “It’s not really words. But it’s so happy to not be alone anymore.”
“Rocks don’t talk,” Teq repeated obstinately.
Ollie shrugged. “I guess some rocks do.”
Teq tapped out an urgent message to Mag, then switched to the ship’s internal scanning system. The DeepWander wasn’t the most advanced model available—and they’d had to do many of the repairs and mods themselves—but he’d have to insist on another safety and security upgrade now that they had the Earthers aboard. And he made an extra note to himself about Kinsley saying she’d had no trouble accessing the bay; that shouldn’t have been possible, at all. The scan beeped its completion, finding no incursion, no leaks, no anomalous signals.
He took a step closer to the stone.
Adeline grabbed his arm. “Teq. Be careful.”
He paused, more from shock than the strength of her grip, which wasn’t nothing. Had anyone ever cautioned him before? Maybe Amma had, but he didn’t remember. While he’d come out of the hatchling grotto sturdy enough to clear slag, it had been obvious he was tuned to the composition and flaws of stone in ways to make a strong crusher. And he’d thrown himself into the work, sometimes literally.
After a breath of hesitation, he put one hand over hers. “I said you would be protected on the DeepWander. I break many things, but not that promise.” He eased away from her.
Because if anything broke here, it might be his focus and restraint. Given his tough hide, how could her soft fingers leave such a mark, invisible yet enduring?
But the reminder of the potential dangers of the unknown changed his course, and he ushered the Earthers out of the processing bay. He made sure to secure the access doors with his personal encryption. He would know if anyone tried to break in again.
Mag was striding up with Dorn and three others. “Teq,” he called. “What is going on?”
“Kinsley needs an escort to her quarters,” Teq replied. “We can discuss the protocols later, but she breached the secondary ore processing bay, potentially endangering a hatchling.”
Jerking her head up, Kinsley stared at Oliver, then Adeline. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Adeline flicked her fingers, silencing the other female. “We’ll talk later too.” Though her tone was as cold as the shadow side of an asteroid, she squared off to Mag. “Kinsley made a mistake, but Earth is a closed world, and per the IDA contract, if you have any disagreements with her, including legal, moral, or personal concerns, you may not impose your own penalties but must let her go back.”
Kinsley straightened in an awkward movement, her eyes wide with alarm. “I can’t—” But at another gesture from Adeline, she settled to her heels.
Mag twitched his carapace, obviously aggravated, but his tone was even when he said, “You need not worry. We would never harm a guest, not even one who tried to steal from us.” Over Kinsley’s objection of “I didn’t! Not this time!” he continued, “Dorn, Reji, take her back to her quarters and make sure she is safeguarded.”
Flanking the smaller Earther, the two orcs looked huge, and Teq felt a pang of uncertainty. Did all the Earther females feel so small? Kinsley had only been responding to whatever message the rock was emitting, the same as Oliver. Although she’d broken through their locks to do it.
Adeline was typing on her datpad. “Kinsley, June and Carmen are on their way and will stay with you until…until we figure out what’s happening. None of us should be alone.”
The other female nodded, although she did not raise her gaze, as the trio left.
“I don’t know that she meant any harm,” Adeline murmured to Teq.
“‘Not this time’?” When he repeated the Earther’s ambiguous concession, Adeline sighed.
But Teq couldn’t reassure her, not when he had to explain the situation to his apex—and anyway, he was troubled himself.
If the orcs lost the fortune before they even got to the Luster…
Maybe all the Earther females would be going back to Earth.