Adeline’s jaw ached while she watched the orcs talking amongst themselves. She was worried for Ollie, worried for Kinsley, worried for what would happen next. Dammit, she might even be worried for a chunk of rock? How much fretting could one body hold before her jaw just clenched itself into a black hole?
She forced herself to not clutch at Ollie, but she didn’t let him go too far either, and when Teq gestured for her son to approach, she was right on his little heels. Nobody questioned her boy without her right there.
But the big crusher dropped to his knee with the same calm kindness he’d shown ever since Ollie had stuck his hand in the slymusk and she’d screamed about it. He’d said he wasn’t looking for any sort of bond or feeling, which was a pity because he was so good at it.
He tilted his antennae toward Mag. “Ollie, can you tell our apex what you told your mother and me?”
Oliver repeated everything he’d already told them about hearing whispers and following whispers. But this time he glanced over his shoulder at the rock, that even under the bright lights didn’t look like anything more than an orc-sized chunk of concrete. “It’s being quiet now. I think it’s afraid of all of us.”
“Maybe Oliver heard it because he’s a child, and not so…unnerving as the rest of you.” She glanced among them with a meaningful look.
“Are we so frightening to you?” Teq asked in a soft voice.
“What are you planning to do with the rock?”
Teq’s tusks jutted, and it was Mag who answered. “Chop it up and sell it at the Luster.”
Oliver let out a little cry of dismay, although Adeline wasn’t sure if it was his own sentiment or the rock’s.
Teq glanced at the datpad on one of his wrists. “It registers with an energy field,” he murmured. “But not anything we’d normally be scanning for, not anything we’d hear.” He twitched his antennae.
Adeline frowned. “Are you saying the rock is alive?”
“I wouldn’t have said that rocks could talk either. What is your definition of alive?”
She wouldn’t answer that, not after the last few years she’d had. Maybe she would’ve registered as a dead space rock herself: cold, distant, nothing left to give.
Except these space miners had posted at the IDA that they still had use for someone like her.
Teq looked up at her. “Could Oliver try to speak to it again?”
“Sure,” Ollie chirped, jumping forward.
But Teq put out one long arm to stop him. “Let’s hear what your mother has to say first.”
They both peered up at her with almost identical beseeching expressions, though one was her familiar little boy and the other was an alien male.
She swallowed hard. “We’ll go together,” she said, hoping neither of them heard the quaver in her voice.
She couldn’t let them see she was afraid of a rock.
Teq programmed something on his datpad and the three of them returned to the giant hangar and approached the thing.
She had thought the glints on the rock were mostly the bright lights of the bay, but as they changed perspective, she realized the sporadic shimmer was coming not from the surface of the rock, like when grains of sand in concrete caught the sunlight, but at least partly from within. And there were more of the twinkles now than before. “What sort of rock is it?” she murmured to Teq.
“The surveyors weren’t entirely sure. It was partly embedded in a reconstituted rubble asteroid we were harvesting for metals and water. It scans mostly as a stony chondrite with some silicates and organic polymers. But there are also completely novel allotropes of carbon atoms arranged in crystal formations with unknown impurities.”
“It’s a diamond,” Ollie whispered. “Bigger than me.”
“Exactly the sort of thing goes for big credits at the Luster,” Teq agreed.
Adeline studied the rock, as if she could peer into the translucent bubbles like tiny windows. “But if it’s alive…”
“Obviously that changes everything.” Teq answered without hesitation, but she thought she caught a note of resignation in his voice, as if the change wouldn’t necessarily be good.
The IDA intake coordinator has been very clear that the orcs were working-class, seeking wife-mates as equal partners, not consorts. That distinction had suited Adeline perfectly at the time; she was done with the illusion that the luxuries of her life hadn’t come with an unpayable cost. But if the crew of the DeepWander had been relying on this windfall, she could understand Teq’s disappointment.
“Those little sparkles,” she murmured. “It’s beautiful.”
Ollie giggled. “That made it happy again.”
She smiled wryly at the rock. “My name is Adeline. And this little one is Oliver, my son. And this is crusher Teq. Who won’t be crushing you.” She slanted a glance at him.
His big shoulders—all of them—lifted and fell on a soundless sigh.
Ollie cocked his head. “It doesn’t really speak English or orc. It’s more like…feelings.”
“That’s why I’m not getting anything,” Teq muttered.
Adeline nibbled at her lip thoughtfully. “The IDA handbook on orcs said your antennae are very sensitive. Maybe you just need to fine-tune a little.”
He stilled—and that stillness made her pulse skip. “Perhaps. For now, hopefully Ollie can translate.” He glanced down. “Oliver, can you ask it what it wants?”
Ollie shook his head, nodded, and shrugged all the same time. “It just doesn’t want to be alone anymore. It wants to be with us.”
“There will be many more beings at the Luster,” Teq said. “It would be very much not alone there.”
Since he only muttered it, Adeline decided she didn’t need to respond. And she wasn’t even going to mention Mag’s comment about chopping it up “Ollie, the rock said it was sad about the cold and dark. Does it need more light and heat?” She tried to project the feeling of warmth and illumination, gesturing at the lights—as if a rock had eyes and could see her—then wrapping one arm around Ollie and the other around Teq, giving them a little squeeze as if that would demonstrate.
Ollie put his arm around her, and after another moment, Teq did the same, making them an awkward octopus of not-aloneness.
“Light and heat, yes,” Ollie said. “And maybe a little water?”
“Rocks need to drink,” Teq said in a disbelieving voice.
“It wants to shine for us,” Ollie explained.
While they’d been talking to the rock, Sil and a few more orcs had arrived, and Oliver went through the whole explanation again. When he was done, Adeline said firmly, “That’s enough for now.”
To her surprise, Oliver didn’t object. “Roxy is tired too.”
“Roxy?”
“That’s going to be its name,” Ollie said.
“Rocks have names,” Teq said with another sigh. “And feelings.”
Oliver tilted his head, in what she was coming to think of as a very orcish gesture. “Everyone has feelings. And when Mom said our names, it wanted a name too.”
“What else is it going to want from us?” Mag asked in a low, ominous voice.
She hadn’t wanted much, Adeline reflected as she led Oliver away, leaving the orcs to their found and lost fortune. When she left Earth, she’d wanted only to be far away. But who—besides Oliver apparently—could say what a wandering space rock would want?
It wasn’t until they left the processing bay that she realized Teq was a half step behind her. He could be very unobtrusive when he wanted to, for all his size and width.
“This is even stranger than taking aliens as wife-mates,” he murmured.
Considering she’d jumped with both feet at the idea of alien dating once she’d discovered the IDA, despite having not even known aliens existed, Adeline found herself unreasonably miffed at his assessment. Just because he didn’t want an alien wife-mate… “It seems to me that the universe is a very strange place,” she said tartly, “with plenty of room for the unexpected.”
He paced beside her in silence back to their quarters. When Ollie wandered into the living room, pulling out the datpad, Adeline blocked the doorway, keeping Teq on the outside.
She partly closed the door, letting her keep half an eye on Ollie while she glared at Teq. “You knew something was out there, calling to him. And you let him follow it.” Her stomach and jaw were cranked so tight she thought she might break. “You used my son. And I told myself no one would ever have the chance to do that again. I should take him and leave, right now.”
After a tense moment, Teq took a step back, dipping his head. “I didn’t know the rock was calling. I thought that, were I in his presence, I would hear what he heard and could stop it. I promised that you and he would be safe, but I’ve failed you.”
Her body felt as hard as his hide, his words bouncing off her cold skin. She was just supposed to be okay, as if nothing had happened?
But… Nothing bad had actually happened. Yes, Oliver had slipped away from them, but she’d been there too. And Kinsley had been the one who unlocked the bay, apparently; although it should have been better secured. And really, it was just a pet space rock… But her son could’ve been hurt, or worse.
The universe was strange and beautiful—and dangerous. How could she do the right thing—how could she even know what the right thing was?—when everything was so new and confusing? How far did she think she could run from her fears?
You don’t have to be scared. It’s gonna be an adventure. Those had been Ollie’s last words before he ran onto the DeepWander.
The breath shuddered out of her, the defensive coldness cracking. “He’s everything to me, Teq. I can’t lose him. Maybe you won’t understand since you don’t want to feel anything.” The last of the air left her on a harsh laugh. “That must make life so much easier.”
The big crusher angled his head away, gazing past her. “No. I think it doesn’t.” Without explaining more, he straightened. “I need to return to my apex.”
She gritted her teeth until they ached too. “Are we confined to quarters like Kinsley?”
He stiffened another degree. “No, of course not. And she will be released as soon as we can confirm she isn’t a spy or a thief.”
Though she didn’t particularly want to be fair, Adeline said, “I don’t think she intended to steal the rock or endanger Ollie. But judging from her questionable skills and her reactions, I’m not sure she is completely innocent of other things.” She shook her head and stared hard at the orc at her door. “Whatever happens, I remind you of the IDA contract.”
For a heartbeat, he didn’t reply, but then he said, “If we cannot fulfill our vows to you, we must let you go.”
She nodded once and pivoted back to the room. As the door closed silently—not even a quiet whoosh; so not cool, as Ollie would say—she forced herself to not go back, to throw herself into his arms and beg for comfort as if she were still a child herself.
She couldn’t go back, and some promises could never be kept.
***
After a patient discussion about following the rules of a game as well as the rules of one’s mother, they ate dinner, and Ollie declared it almost as good as Teq’s. Later, as Adeline settled Oliver in his bed—they could at least start in his own bed—he blinked up at her. “Roxy will be okay, won’t it, Mom? Teq won’t crush it, will he?”
She wanted to reassure him. That had always been her first instinct, of course, even as things had gotten worse with Robert and his family. But Oliver had been younger then, and platitudes had been all she had. “I don’t know what will happen,” she told him. “But we will do our best. That’s what we always do.”
He nodded, but behind his glasses, his eyes, so like hers, narrowed with the first inkling of doubt that what he was promised would always happen.
Yes, his eyes were maybe too much like hers.
She kissed his forehead, lingering for a heartbeat but not so long that he would absorb her worry. “Sweet dreams, owlet. Your pet rock can talk to you during regular business hours.”
He giggled under his breath, a peaceful sound that still ripped open her heart, then he rolled to his side with a deep sigh, falling off to sleep before she even reached the door. She held back a sigh of her own. Maybe she hadn’t done such a terrible job if he could still fall asleep so easily, after everything.
She propped a few containers from the pantry against his door that would tumble and wake her if he left his room. She couldn’t leave the datpad with him; he wasn’t that good a little boy.
Just as well she brought the device with her, because it pinged as soon as she collapsed onto the sitting cushions in the living room. June’s image flashed on the screen, and she toggled the connection.
“You okay?” she asked immediately.
June nodded. “Kinsley is still locked in her bedroom—I mean she locked herself in there; the orcs didn’t do it—and she’s refusing to talk to me about what happened. We’re okay. I don’t think the orcs would do anything to scare or hurt us.” She pulled the screen closer to her face and whispered, “You don’t think they would, do you?”
“I think don’t grit your teeth or it will give you TMJ disorder.” When June just gave her a dubious look, Adeline sighed. “Oh, I think they’ll abide by the IDA rules. So Kinsley didn’t say why she reacted so strongly to the idea of going back to Earth?”
June shook her head. “We all have our reasons, but she’s not sharing.”
Adeline bit back an annoyed grunt. Maybe the cagey Kinsley and recalcitrant Teq would be a good pair: no sharing allowed. “Well, if she wants to be on her own, there’s no reason for you to be there. You’re not in trouble.”
June gave her a little smile. “Kinsley did come out long enough to give me a bar from her precious stash of chocolate. So she’s definitely bribing me to stay.” The smile faltered. “If she really tells me to go, I will. But just because people say they want to be alone doesn’t always mean it’s true.”
After asking how Ollie was doing, June reported that she’d checked in with the other Earther women and none of them had heard the rock. “From what I’ve been able to put together, the orcs really thought they’d found a grand treasure,” she explained. “It’s why they brought us to be their dates to the Luster—because they thought they’d finally made it.” She let out a gusting sigh. “Man, do I know how that feels.”
Before Adeline could comment on making it, the front door pinged a request for entry.
June’s eyebrows went up. “It’s late.”
Adeline knew her cheeks flushed again. “They better not think I’m going to wake up Ollie to talk to a rock,” she grumbled.
“Go get ‘em, mama.” June closed the connection.
Of course it was Teq standing there. And suddenly go get him took on a new meaning that sent even more blood rushing to her cheeks.
He hesitated there. “If I’m bothering you…”
“I wouldn’t have opened the door.” She stepped back. “What’s up?”
For an instant, his gaze flicked to the ceiling before she guessed his translator explained the idiom. “I just wanted…” He tugged at the pouch sash across his chest, as if the wide band was choking him. “I thought I should check on you.”
Caught between curiosity at his tension and lingering unhappiness, she finally gestured to the sitting cushions. “Can I get you something to drink?” Despite her complicated feelings, he looked wilted in a way that made him seem…well, not small, but somehow more her size.
“I have to get back to the bay,” he said. “Sil is still running tests with the assay team, and I don’t want to leave them there. It’s going to be a long night.”
Sympathy piped up before she could censor it. “I can make you some coffee, if you think the caffeine would help your energy level.”
His antennae perked. “Earther coffee? I’ve heard about it. It’s listed as a stimulant with some addictive properties, and possibly some aphrodisiac effects.”
“I don’t know about that. Unless it’s falling in love with more coffee.” She went to the kitchen area. “I’ll start a cup. It’s quick and you can get right back.”
She made a cup of tea for herself—something from the orc stash labeled clearly enough ‘fermented leaves for brewing’—and joined him on the orc version of a couch. His big body pressed into the cushions, leaving her elevated above him.
“Thank you,” he murmured, accepting the mug. He took a drink, and his antennae flared so wide she could see between each feathery strand. “Slag and sludge, this is what the galaxies rave about?”
She chuckled. “It’s an acquired taste.”
“Acquired at great expense usually, which I fear may be beyond the orcs at this time.” He cradled the mug in all four hands, his head bowed, antennae drooping.
“We all knew that your crew was not rich,” she said quietly. “The IDA is very clear that they facilitate partnerships, not gold-diggers or sugar daddies.”
“We do dig for gold sometimes. But I understand your meaning. Still, if we show up at Luster Station without the fortune we’ve been teasing, our reputation will be tarnished, making contracts more difficult to come by, and delaying or even damaging permanently our chances of joining the consortium.”
She eased back in her cushion. “Tell me more about why the Luster is so important to you.”
For all his comments about the flavor of the coffee, he took another drink and then another, as if to wash down something even less palatable. “It’s what our apex wants,” he said in a stoic tone. “Or perhaps I should say rather it’s his obsession. For reasons he will not explain to me or anyone—maybe Amma, but she is not sharing either—Mag believes that a dedicated berth at Luster Station will be our new home, even as we work the deep space sectors.” He stared at his mug. “Only Amma remembers our homeworld. The rest of us were hatched from stasis here on the DeepWander. All we’ve known is this journey through the dark, capturing bits of lost rock. This is our home now. Yet for some reason, that’s not enough for Mag. Right after we found that strange stone, he contacted the vreign of Luster Station and demanded an invite, claiming the promise of a fortune such as they’ve never seen. And then he immediately contracted with the IDA for…for you.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “He risked everything. And now I think we will lose it all.”
She swallowed hard, and the orc tea was faintly bitter in her throat. “When you say lose everything…”
Teq looked away. “I caught a glimpse of a private communication that makes me think Mag consigned the DeepWander as a surety that we would have a slot during the main auction.”
A terrible chill swept through her, erasing all the warmth of the tea. Just her luck to have escaped an embezzler’s family to end up on a gambler’s ship. Or maybe it wouldn’t even be his ship much longer.
And then where would her home be? What bed could her child call his?
Worry had been her constant—and only—companion for so long, but it seemed exhausted now too. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s so hard. When my father handed me off at the wedding to his business partner’s son, I felt like I lost my home. But at least I had a planet.” She reached over to set her hand on Teq’s elbow. In some ways, it didn’t matter how many elbows he had, just more places for her to offer what she could of consolation.
He finished his coffee and set the mug aside, and although he’d said he needed to get back, his big body seemed to sink deeper into the cushions, canting her slightly toward him. “I don’t think I would’ve realized—or perhaps I should say acknowledged—how hard it was until…” He looks down at her hand. “Until you.” He glanced up at her, and from this close distance, she was mesmerized by the glint of light across the facets of his big, black eyes, not the simple reflections of the human pupil, but something else, something coming from within like bioluminescence, far away but maybe more tantalizing because of it, as if drawing her closer…
“It wasn’t my intent to make things harder for you.” She gave his elbow a gentle squeeze before releasing him. “A connection shouldn’t hurt more than being alone.”
Barely had her skin parted from his before he was reaching out to capture her hand again. “Not your fault,” he said gruffly. “According to Sil, you Earthers may have just discovered a previously unknown life form. What an astonishment.”
“Ugh. Ollie’s pet rock.” She grimaced. “And that’s making things harder for you too.”
“The orcs will survive. We always have.”
She’d told herself that plenty of times, each time fearing she was losing more and more, slipping farther away from whatever dreams she’d once had. But… Had she really ever had dreams of her own? She’d gone from barely more than a child herself to married to the worst sort of childish man, only to have her own child, beloved more than life or dreams. And here she found herself, in the darkest nights with this alien man and his mesmerizing sparkling eyes…
She reached out, her palm hovering just beyond the curve of his tusk. And for once, that fearsome tooth seemed not menacing but the promise of protection, a weapon she might wield against the true dangers of the universe. “Your eyes…” she murmured. “They glow so bright.”
The harsh exhalation of his breath gusted across the sensitized skin of her inner wrist. “I can’t control it. The i’lva. It’s a signal in your presence. Just ignore it.”
She leaned a little closer, and the light in his eyes flickered softly, not unlike the rock, isolated in the ore processing bay, whispering to itself and any other ears that might hear.
What was this mighty crusher refusing to say?
“Maybe…” She felt as if she were reaching out in the dark, uncertain what lay just beyond her fingertips. Would it bite her? Drag her down? “Maybe for just a little while we don’t need to be so alone. We can feel what it’s like to be here while the rest of the universe spins on its way.”
“Adeline.” Her name was little more than a whisper in the dark.
“Not for forever,” she hastened to reassure him. “Even the universe won’t last forever. Not even for a night. Just for now. Just for this moment.”
She leaned a little closer over him, then paused, half of breath from contact. So, so close, the fractured lights in his eyes were whirling galaxies, but it didn’t make her dizzy. Instead, she felt as though it all moved around her, that at least for this heartbeat she was the center of his universe.
Too much, too much. No wonder he feared such feeling.
“Or you can ignore me,” she whispered.
“I think I’d rather kiss you.” He tilted his face up toward her, his mouth opening under hers.
With a breath, she threaded her arm behind his neck, aligning their mouths perfectly like a long-lost ship coming home.
Maybe it was ridiculous to have come this far to find something so simple as a kiss. But maybe no one was promised happiness, no matter where they were born or hatched, whatever their credit score or galactic credits. Maybe she’d done exactly the right thing, faking a taste for adventure as she pointed toward the stars.
Because the lingering tang of coffee—once one of the few pleasures of her mornings besides seeing Ollie’s smile—had become something else: the taste of Teq.
Their lips finally parted, she sighed in satisfaction—well, satisfaction and a little sexual frustration. “That was…quite a kiss,” she murmured. “You are really crushing it.”
His eyes glinted at her. “I surmise that in this meaning, crushing it does not mean I am too big for you. It means I have mastered the kiss.”
“You are good, very good,” she agreed, and she couldn’t stop herself from stretching out against him, partly alongside, partly over him. His body was hot and maybe a little hard. But she’d read romance novels about hot and hard and, yes, masterful…
“I would kiss you more,” he rasped. “More time, more places.”
Her eyes flared wide. Now she was definitely feeling a little hot. “More…places?”
“I’ve been reading the IDA handbook on Earther females and the handling thereof. Kissing can be more than mouths.”
“Oh,” she said faintly. “Yes, that is true.”
“In the interest of interspecies collaboration, will you show me?”
She hesitated. Did she want to be handled? By so many hands? A little hot and heavy groping here in this alien beanbag was one thing. Adventure was great, but she didn’t want there to be too much discovery. “Oliver is asleep in the other room,” she started to rationalize, then paused again.
She would do anything for her child, had done impossible things, but just as she’d never wanted to blight his innocence with her fears, so she would not blame him for her apprehension.
And maybe she was finally done with clinging to her own naivety. Her lack of worldly experience had left her a pawn in other people’s plans.
This was her chance to be otherworldly.
“Let’s go to my room.”
In a single, surging movement he stood from the cushions, lifting her with him.
She might’ve gasped in surprise—and maybe a little delight—but he brought his mouth down on hers again, harder this time, his tusks pressing into the skin of her cheeks, and though she closed her eyes, not quite swooning, but not not swooning either, she could almost imagine that those fierce weapons were her own.
It was just pretend. And maybe she was too old now to play pretend, but the thought gave her a boldness she’d never thought to possess. Like for now she could possess him.
Even though he was doing the possessing at the moment, all his arms wrapped around her as if he might never let her go. She wasn’t asking for forever, she reminded herself.
He carried her down the hall while kissing her—no need to watch where he was going when he had echolocation—and didn’t stop until they were behind her closed door. The nightlight she’d added flicked on automatically, sending a sprinkle of pale dots twirling slowly around the walls.
“Let me down,” she commanded.
His arms unpeeled, one at a time, setting her down next to the nest bed. As he took a step back, she felt as if a new her was being revealed. Or maybe not exactly new; just unfamiliar and slightly out of focus, as if she were looking through a telescope at something far away, tumbling and isolated against the stars.
But she wasn’t alone right now, was she? And with Teq, she could be this brave new interpretation of herself.
Before the strange certainty wavered, she stripped, her fingers hesitating only one briefest moment on the sides of her not-best panties, because she hadn’t been intending to do “more kisses” with her alien date. She hoped he didn’t notice her hands trembling as she flung them hastily away and stood before him, maybe not the bravest interpretation of herself, but certainly the most naked.
He stood silent and still except for his antennae, which blurred with vibration. “You are so delicate,” he rasped. “So soft. And my hands have been crushing for too long.” All four of his fists flexed and opened wide in the same helpless yearning seething in her.
His hesitation gave her back some courage, and she took the step forward that he’d retreated. “We go as far as we want, no farther,” she assured him. She held out her hands, suddenly wishing she had two more. “Soft maybe, but not that delicate. I think you could touch me as you did the rock, with curiosity and care.”
“Like a fortune found.” His lower hands reached out to clasp hers while his upper ones framed her face. “Another kiss, for curiosity and courage.”
Of course the melding of their mouths brought their bodies closer, the hard plane of him pressing into her tender flesh. Her breasts plumped against his bulging lower pecs, and his big thigh alien wedged between her legs in a way that made her moan.
“That is the sound of pleasure, yes?” His hands dropped from her face to her shoulders, steadying her when she swayed.
“Pleasure, yes,” she murmured, dazed. “So hard…”
“The sensation of your flesh pierces me,” he said in a wondering voice. “The points of your breasts and between your legs…” He let out a shuddering breath. “I feel them harden, tighten…”
Oh god, yes, her nipples ached, but he felt the throb of her clit too? Of course his kind had evolved in the darkness to feel the faintest vibrations. And what was happening between her legs was by no means faint. In fact it felt like an earthquake.
“Touch me,” she urged. “With all your hands.”