5. Chapter 5

Scrambling fast, Ava didn’t remember much of the trip back to the engine room beyond using her magnetic bracers to slide quickly down the shafts.

Her body was filled with adrenaline, heart pounding.

In her mind, she kept replaying the memory of the four Vorbax with faces so similar to hers. The Phor never had prisoners on board, ever.

I must be slightly crazy, because I’m not nervous as much as excited that there is something different happening.Sweat ran down her arms as she rushed to the engine hall.

If there was ever a time someone would suspect it was more than just poms in the vents it would have been on this trip back. She was not moving carefully at all, and dinging noises in the vents followed all her movements.

The grate plopped on the floor and the rivets holding it in place went flying when Ava burst back into the control room. She didn’t pay the grate any attention, leaving the pieces in a heap on the floor.

She dropped her knapsack and peeled off the heat suit, draping it over the back of her chair, then picked up her com and tried to ping Ebel, but saw that he had left his on the desk. He must still be fixing the pistons like he promised.

Ava took a deep, steadying breath before walking to the bookshelf. There she pulled down all the books she had documenting other alien species, piling them next to her on her little desk in an unorganized heap.

Before settling in to read, Ava poked her head out of the room.

“Ebel, I’m back. Come down.” Her voice echoed through the engine room.

She heard a faint return chitter but it was too soft for her translator to engage. Ebel would return when he wanted. She had a mystery to solve in the meantime.

She went back to her desk and picked up a book to open, pushing the odds and ends already on her desk to the side to make room.

Ebel came in at a leisurely pace a few minutes later, the broken piston he needed to repair in his hand.

Ava had moved to sit on the floor and was flipping through the pages of various books that were open in a heap around her. She was not finding anything remotely similar to what she had seen in the cargo hold. After not finding anything related to the Vorbax alphabetically she’d started looking through page by page, comparing the pictures to her memory.

“Were you yelling a minute ago, Human?” Ebel moved closer to her after taking in the disorder in the room. “All this dust and mess could screw up the biologics, you know,” he chittered in dismay.

Ava didn’t acknowledge his complaint, eyes narrowed on the book she was scanning. “That can be cleaned up later. That transport contained creatures, prisoners, named Vorbax.” She ended the sentence and looked up at him questioningly, finger still on the open book.

Ebel’s fanged, furry mouth made a face approximate to a frown, and his convex eyes narrowed. “Vorbax? Are you sure?”

Ava nodded her head vigorously, swallowing at his reaction. “Yes, they were blue creatures, with faces kinda like mine, and they walked kind of how I do but the legs were different. They looked much bigger. Oh, and they also had fins on their heads with some scales on the top—” She motioned to her head, trying to describe them.

Ebel had turned around and was clicking on his transmitter feed rapidly, bringing up the Phor database and connecting it to the main screens he was using to watch his Boxhi tournament earlier.

Ava stood up, insides swirling, and walked to look over his shoulder, watching him click away.

She shook her head at herself. I should have just looked at the Phor logs to begin with instead of trying to figure things out on my own.

Moments later, a video of one of the Vorbax showed up on the screen. The muscly blue alien was in the process of brutally killing a bunch of Tuxa in what looked like a warehouse.

“Yes! That was it! Why aren’t they in any books?” Ava exclaimed, excited. She looked down at her books strewn on the floor and nudged one with her foot. Useless garbage.

Ebel clicked absently, lost in thought and watching the footage. “Those books are outdated. Vorbax have not been part of the known species very long. Nor have they allowed any to document much information about them. I only heard about them a few years ago when they started targeting and killing the Tuxa en masse. The Tuxa claimed it was because of their technology.” He stopped and gave Ava a long look. “Like their technology could make anyone envious enough to kill like that.”

Ava snorted a laugh and walked closer to the feed, the smile falling off her face a second after as her eyes widened in shock.

It was a bloodbath.

The Vorbax only had three in their squadron, and within moments they were the only ones left standing. They didn’t even look like they were winded as they dismembered the Tuxa methodically.

“That’s some scary shit,” she said nervously, rubbing the back of her neck. She looked at them as they walked around the room checking their kills. She was both fascinated and repulsed by the bloodshed. She couldn’t even put the poison for the poms out when Ebel asked her.

“That’s some scary shit,” Ebel echoed, his antennas moving in time with his words.

He quickly moved over to his abandoned com and picked it up, muttering to himself, “That’s some scary shit right on board with us.”

Ava kept watching the feed replay as he got caught up on his messages, fear racing up and down her spine as she stared. To have that much power . . .

“It looks like there’s four of them in the animal cells. Thankfully we have enough space to keep them each in their own cell. What the hell was the collective thinking to agree to this?” Ebel shook his head, antennas flattened. His voice was strained under the robotic translation Ava received.

Ava grabbed her own com from the table to scroll through her messages. She got roughly the same alerts Ebel did with the chatter from the other crew, even the sensitive ones included in the Phor’s internal communications. Ebel had set this com up for her himself, giving her more access as the years passed and they became closer.

A few of the contractors had already requested stops at a neighboring planet to take their leave, not wanting to remain on the ship while it was harboring two species at war. Ava couldn’t blame them, but the requests had already all been denied. They were going to lose some crew permanently for that once they did dock. Ava couldn’t request a leave. She would be stuck in the engine room regardless, so it would hurt to see that much turnover. Her heart fell at the idea that Nuor might leave. There wasn’t a message from her in the feed.

“Ava, I am going to go meet with the others in the queen’s room.” Ebel reached over and pointed at the feed of the queen still slumbering and adjusted it so the volume could be raised. “You are welcome to listen in. We will probably need you to go back through the vents and observe more.”

“Understood.” Ava’s mouth curved upward. She loved listening in.

“Wait!” she said as Ebel got up to go. She rummaged through her knapsack to bring out her notebook and held it out. “Do you want the notes I took of what else is in the cargo bay?”

Ebel glanced at the papers in her hand and sighed. “Might as well take them. Perhaps we are just overreacting and should do business as usual—especially since they are using the silga strings to restrain them.” His voice broke at the end of the sentence, obviously not reassuring himself.

He took the notes in his second pair of fingers and folded them over before getting out of his beanbag chair, legs clicking on the tile floor.

“Are the strings strong enough?” Ava asked, noting his uncertainty.

“They should be,” he said evasively, walking toward the door.

“Wait!” Ava said again. “Any place other than the standard logs I can look for more info?” Ava turned back toward the transmitter as it replayed the video of the battle and slid onto the seat he just vacated. She pulled the seat closer to the monitor to see better.

Ebel walked back and went to the feed, taking both the Vorbax video and engine room cameras off the main screen. He tapped a few times until the Phor mainframe appeared. Here he typed “Vorbax” into the deep search engine, authorized the data to be displayed, and left her with around thirty articles on the Vorbax displayed on all the surrounding screens before handing the feed controller to her.

“Let me know the highlights when I return; I can’t remember that much about them myself,” Ebel said distractedly.

Ava watched him leave, his stubby two sets of lower limbs propelling his fuzzy, yellow body along faster than she had seen him move in a long time.

Before turning back to the screen, she went to the bathroom again and made an attempt to clean her hands, which were covered in soot from the vents. Ebel would hate to have dirty fingerprints on his screens.

As she walked back to the computer, she grabbed her water and began drinking it while palming the control stick. She was going to become a Vorbax expert by the time Ebel got back. Her mouth was a firm line of determination.

Just as quickly as Ava made that goal, she had to temper it. This is going to be harder than I thought.

Ebel wasn’t kidding when he said that there was limited information on the Vorbax. Other than some beautiful pictures of the males and a few articles that didn’t say anything new, she was coming up empty.

She put a picture of the Vorbax on the biggest screen. There weren’t many male Humans in the breeding facility she was born at. They were usually sold after growing up to a serviceable age. The few she remembered didn’t have physiques like these Vorbax.

They’re as handsome as the Tuxa are ugly. She stopped and just admired the 3D rendering of one of the males, feeling flushed, before focusing on the words again.

Thankfully most of the articles were in the Common language, but a few were in the Phor’s native tongue, which she couldn’t read beyond a few phrases related to engine modules and technology. The ones in Common appeared to be propaganda pieces put out by the Tuxa. Those pieces were derisive of the Vorbax culture and everything about them. In fact, the video that Ebel showed her earlier of the battle was released by the Tuxa themselves, probably to try to paint themselves as the victim.

Ava read some of the articles with heavy skepticism. They’re trying too hard. She wasn’t convinced and searched for less biased sources.

Picking one of the Phor pieces, she had it read the article aloud for her, relying on her translator chip to change the clicks and whirrs as it read to Common for her to understand. The computer required an override she couldn’t do to translate the written word to Common.

Once that was done, she opened one of the articles in Common on another screen to read as well, alternating between listening and reading, trying to decipher what she could from around the Tuxa’s heavy hand of censorship. She gritted her teeth in frustration, annoyed at having to puzzle together every little bit of information.

Ava only just started to learn about the Vorbax’s home planet Xai, a humid and jungle-looking place, when the com from the queen’s room burst with noise, startling her.

That was fast. She turned away from the main feed and scooted up close to the queen’s one off to the side of her information feeds to see better.

“Whyyyy am I being woken up?” the queen mother grumbled. Looking up at the feed, Ava saw that several of the Phor had already gathered in her room littered with pillows and blankets. As she watched, Ebel slid into the back, farthest out of sight. Ava winced and turned the feed volume down a little; the queen was always so loud when she spoke.

The queen’s fangs dripped slight acid. Ava watched it drip on the pillows strewn around her room, seeing holes start to appear. She’d be pissed tomorrow when she realized what her acid ruined and would demand they be replaced. Ava had seen it happen before. In the time Ava was a part of the crew, the male Phor had wised up and now had extras stuffed in unused cabins.

The Phor drones, Ebel included, would do quite literally anything to placate her. The nearest one started humming to calm her down, almost like a buzz.

Wert walked up and talked with her, his body prostate on the floor in front of her. “Beloved Queen. We would not dare disturb your rest were it not concerning. We took on a transport today of a bunch of war criminals the Tuxa had captured. They are Vorbax, our love. The Tuxa said the collective signed off on this.”

Wert’s antennas were so low they hit the floor.

Ava found that the most startling. She had never seen one of them in such a vulnerable position before. Every inch of him was quivering. She shifted on her chair nervously while watching.

The queen stopped dripping acid, though the scowl returned to her face.

Swatting Wert aside, she reached forward and called up a hologram of the main collective colony on their primary planet.

Wert fell against the nightstand table when she hit him, stumbling over, but quickly moved back into a kneeling position at the queen’s feet.

Ava winced watching it happen. Poor Wert. He was always one of the queen’s favorites too.

The feed was distorted from the angle Ava had to watch from so the hologram call was hard to make out, but she could hear the queen arguing with the other collective queens.

Their clicks went too fast for her translator to keep up, so Ava only received parts of the discussion. She rubbed her ear in frustration. The queen’s face was visibly annoyed from the little bit she could see, and she was gesturing wildly while talking, acid flying again. Ava strained to listen and gathered that the collective appeared to be pushing back on her complaints. They cited an enormous credit amount the Tuxa had delivered for their cooperation and that they did not know ahead of time the species involved in transport.

“Would you have still accepted knowing what you know now?” the queen spat out, the Phor closest to her wincing as acid hit them.

Ava grimaced as well, watching the sizzle on their fuzzy shoulders.

“Affirmative, we would have. You know we are in need of resources to expand. Our other ships have taken similar risks for their contracts. You cannot think yourself above this. Everything is for the collective. You will remember this from when we assigned you your own ship and harem. We can assign another queen mother if you are not in alignment with our needs.”

The queen visibly bristled at this. Her antennas went flying and her large abdomen started twitching over her many pillows. The threat hit its mark though. She took a more conciliatory appearance with her antennas smoothing out and her tone more mild. “Very well, we will be in contact.”

“Please let us know. Frequent status reports.” The hologram clicked out.

The queen mother looked over her harem and sighed. The drones were all silent for a minute, not wanting to offend her, their bodies silently vibrating. Keeping up a steady buzz, the one nearest her reached out and caressed her side.

Ava wasn’t interested in seeing their lovefest, so she looked away from the feed back to the Vorbax papers, disgusted, until she heard the queen cry, “Enough. It is enough. We will follow our orders. The video feeds for that area are offline. The Tuxa don’t want us observing them as well as the prisoners. I want only the collective to handle their daily upkeep and to be our eyes down there. I don’t trust our usual contracted staff to engage with either the Tuxa or Vorbax. We have to be careful enough with this, and if we ask the contractors for help they’ll likely try to extort us because it’s different from their stated agreements. We will petition the Tuxa for camera access in the main hallway at the very least as a compromise.”

The collective started discussing security measures on the ship and extra barriers that could be put in place in case the Tuxa and the Vorbax became combative. As this ship was primarily a transport for cargo, not a warship, there was not much in the way of extra measures already built in other than to depressurize the whole compartment as a last resort, killing all inside.

Ava frowned, silently watching. That’s brutal. She observed the queen visibly bristle when this was suggested, knowing that if it came to that she would most likely be relocated back to her home planet and lose her prized position.

Ava half listened, still clicking through the Phor logs, until she heard the queen mention, “That slave Human can help as well. Tell her to observe when they think they are alone like she does for the shipments. She can also handle most of the upkeep so we don’t have to stretch ourselves too thin. Tell her she needs to observe the Tuxa as much as the Vorbax.”

The queen mother took a deep breath and repositioned herself on her pillows before continuing, “The Tuxa are being too secretive in these contracts and taking advantage of us in these ways, regardless of what the home colony makes agreements about. The queens back home have not been here in space for many years; they do not remember what it is like. We need to keep them all placated and happy until they are gone.”

The others glanced at Ebel, knowing he was her primary keeper. Ava watched him with her hand gripping the computer’s controller tightly as he stepped forward and lowered himself to the floor. “Yes, my queen. She can be assigned anywhere we need.”

Ava’s heartbeat picked up, fear racing down her spine. A part of her felt betrayed Ebel would give in to that demand so readily, with no pushback. She had already guessed they would want her to observe, but upkeep sounded more involved.

Shaking her head, she let out a breath. It will be fine. Fine. Fine. Suddenly she was not as amused about all the excitement happening on the ship now that she needed to be directly involved.

She slid forward and put her head in her hands and tugged on the roots of her hair, anxiety swirling in her stomach.

Ava sat back up, took a deep breath, and threw herself into the logs with renewed energy now that she knew she would be observing the Vorbax firsthand. She played the audio again and tried to focus. Her nerves were too jittery and she needed to restart the feed a few times before absorbing the information.

She turned the feed of the queen to mute to focus better, snapping the controls off with an irritated huff. There wasn’t much she’d miss anyway. All the drones were now just doing their ritual parting and soothing motions before the meeting winded down and they returned to their posts.

Ebel rushed back into the control room a while later. Ava startled at hearing the door open, already on edge and so focused on the logs she didn’t hear the ping of him entering the engine room. She had two feeds open at once now, and the blue light was intense from both screens. One recited to her and the other feed she was attempting to read.

“What did you learn?” Ebel said abruptly.

Ava frowned, deciding to not mention what happened in the queen’s room just yet.

Instead she focused on the records open in front of her, her hands clenched tight. “Not too much, unfortunately.” She pointed at the records in Common written by the Tuxa. “This is obviously propaganda seeing as they hate each other. Every other sentence in it is a slam of some aspect of Vorbax culture and repeats that they ‘are violent and do not respect life’ without any specifics.”

Pointing at the audio feeds that were reciting the Phor papers, she continued, “These are better. Not by much, but at least they have more information. They say the Vorbax have been really isolated up until four years ago. That’s one thing that the Tuxa logs agree on too. Then it was all-out war between the two as the first known contact. No idea what happened there, but I doubt the Vorbax suddenly decided after an eternity of ignoring other species to suddenly get bloodthirsty toward one of the biggest and the strongest for no reason.”

Smiling, Ava pulled up a picture, “But they have really beautiful birds, don’t they? They remind me of Nuor.” The picture was of a multicolored bird with brilliant plumage with an open mouth looking like it was singing on top of a thick green branch.

Ebel clicked, “Nuor would take offense at you comparing her to a bird.” He considered it a moment. “But dammit, I see it too.” He chittered in his form of laughter. “So you found out what we knew already. The Tuxa and Vorbax hate each other for unknown reasons and they have beautiful birds on their planet.”

Ava tilted her head, squinted, and nodded. “Pretty much, yeah.” Moving her fingers on the touchscreen she continued, “They haven’t allowed any offworlders to visit outside of one trip where the nature pictures were taken. The Galactic Board took the pics when the Vorbax got their Class 1 species designation. They were initially categorized as Class 3, probably because that was how the Tuxa put them down, but they fought it.”

Ava clicked over to another screen to show the detailed logs from the board’s visit to the Vorbax’s home planet, Xai, to put the planet on the database.

Ebel used his delicate hands to enlarge the paperwork and look while she continued, his convex eyes focused.

“Actually, all the detailed information known about them is from that one visit and the paperwork. They gotta have advanced technology somewhere to have space flight, but they supposedly never left their orbit or talked with any outside species. That is, they didn’t until the war with the Tuxa broke out. Even now they have only sent one representative to the Galactic Board since they received Class 1 status, but there’s nothing on him except his picture.” She put the picture on the screen, over the name tag “Iryl.”

The large eyes, so similar to her own except for the lack of white, stared back. His face was Humanoid otherwise, except blue and with the finlike protrusions from the back of his head and the smattering of scales over the top of his forehead. Dark blue tattoos glinted around his neck, and it looked like they extended down under the shirt he was wearing. He was a close enough mix between Human and exotic to be beautiful to her, not that she would ever talk with Ebel about that feeling.

She flushed at the idea of his reaction to her thoughts. Ebel would never understand.

“Right, all of that, and they are lethal in hand-to-hand combat,” Ebel finished for her tiredly. He flopped his yellow body down in his beanbag next to her. “You heard what the queen mother wants you for, right?” he said haltingly, his antennas plastered on his head in uncertainty.

Ava’s voice cracked, her mouth suddenly dry. “Yes, I heard.” She let the words hang. Ebel didn’t say more so she continued, “I can observe. I haven’t been to the animal cells in the shaft in forever, but it wasn’t hard to get over there.”

Ebel nodded. “The queen requested more than that though. We will need someone to act as liaison for food and water for our house guests as well. A few of us will also take turns rotating with you, but we need all hands on our other areas, so they can’t be spared the whole time.”

Ava nodded, her head tilted downward and eyes crestfallen. I don’t really want to do this. “Ebel, do I have to?” It was one thing to be in the vents in the cargo hall; it was another to have to be so close to two alien species.

“Yes, Ava,” he said in a strained voice. His antennas were still low, limp against his head.

She nervously started to fiddle with her com on her arm, checking to see if there were any other messages.

Nothing. Not even from Nuor.

Eyes narrowed, Ebel walked over to the food processor. “Speaking of needing to get food . . . they probably got the new supplies loaded. Since Tuxa are actually on board with us, the food seemed to be a bit better quality and . . . tah dah!” He pulled out a plate, and on it was a pasta dish.

It didn’t look like an actual home-cooked meal or what the queen had, but it smelled amazing and that was enough. His antennas came up as he held out the plate to her, leaning forward in a half bow.

Ava knew Ebel was trying his best to distract her, with his antennas waggling and his bright voice.

She kept a closed expression for a moment longer before uncrossing her arms and sighing. It wasn’t his fault for the way things were. The food also looked better than she had seen for a long time, and despite recent events, she was starving.

“Gods, Ebel. I could kiss you.” Ava forced a smile and almost skipped to go grab a fork.

“Ew, that gross thing you talked about where you put your mouth on mine? I’ve seen the Human information videos. Please don’t.” He put his antennas down in mock horror and opened up his fanged mouth so wide she could look down his entire tooth-filled throat. He looked relieved she was eating and not protesting anymore.

Ava made a kissy noise and began eating the food, ignoring the anxiety in her stomach. She might have several big problems looming, but right now she was going to enjoy this meal.