Page 12 of Argurma Monster

But now that she was awake... well, now her curiosity was roused. Brushing her hand over her clothes and trying not to grimace at how gritty they felt, she headed toward the door, eager to explore. Talech, ever observant, immediately stood and covered the distance between them in just a few steps, meeting her at the door. She smiled up at him and patted his chest.

“Are you coming with me, big guy?”

He clicked in agreement, his blue eyes glowing with interest.

“Where are you going?” Zoreth growled tiredly as he rose from the bed and straightened to his full height.

“Exploring,” she replied cheerfully only to be met with a rattling sigh.

“What is it that you plan to explore?” He didn’t sound irritated. His voice was flat as if he could not imagine what she could possibly want to explore in a fascinating spaceship.

“Your ship, of course,” she explained as she turned to the door and then frowned at the realization that she had no idea how to open it. She squinted at it and immediately began searching for some sort of opening mechanism. “How could I not want to explore? This is my first time in a spaceship. Ah, how do I get out?”

Zoreth’s heavy footsteps approached so she turned to wait for him as Talech growled quietly behind her. She refused to be amused by the menace. Instead, she nudged him with an elbow to silence him as Zoreth arrived at her side. The male shot Talech a narrowed look, his vibrissae rising in warning as he grabbed Beverly by the wrist. Predictably, Talech loomed, his arachnid limbs unfolding slightly as he hissed.

“Relax, Talech,” she murmured. “He isn’t going to hurt me. Especially not with you standing right there.”

A disgruntled look crossed Zoreth’s face. “Talech processes that I will not hurt you. He does not like me touching you,” he corrected. “But he also knows that it is not for him to decide and that his attempts to intimidate me will not work.” He huffed as Talech quieted, and Beverly glanced back at him with bemusement. “The locking panel is here,” Zoreth explained, drawing her attention back to him as he guided her hand over a barely visible panel beside the door.

He flattened her palm against it. The panel immediately began to glow blue in response, and she shivered as she felt something electric run down the length of her hand. It was the strangest feeling, but she didn’t get much time to analyze it before it disappeared entirely and the blue glow beneath her hand winked out. He released her wrist and took a step back.

“The ship has now recorded your biosignature as an authorized passenger. You will now have access to most parts of this ship.”

As if on cue, the door slid open in front of her, and she gave it a curious look. “Why didn’t you do that before?”

His mandibles clicked quietly. “It was not deemed necessary at that moment. My priority was to terminate my mission and vacate Earth the moment I learned that Kaylar had departed. You have necessary access now.”

She frowned and stepped through the door. That seemed like a quibbling detail when it clearly took all but two minutes to take care of, and he didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the fact that he had affectively trapped them in a room for hours. She paused and glanced back as Talech followed her out.

“Wait, what about him?” she demanded, gesturing to Talech.

Zoreth’s vibrissae twisted in the air in a state of unease. “It is unadvisable to give a damaged male unrestricted access to the ship,” he said slowly. “Talech’s systems should have synched to the minimal open channels of the system once he arrived on the ship. To give him further access is to invite the possibility of him unconsciously taking control over the ship in a state of distress. It is inadvisable.”

She opened her mouth to protest—she didn’t like the idea of Talech being essentially trapped on the ship—but the big male reassured her with a quiet purr.

“He is correct, anastha. My moments of confusion are too great to risk what I might do to the ship.”

“I still don’t like it,” she grumbled but sighed heavily as she continued into the hall, the steady clip of the males following behind echoing softly in the silence. She peered around, wasn’t there something missing? “You travel completely alone? Don’t you have one of those companions—dorashnal, I think Talech called them. I don’t remember Kaylar having anything of the sort, but he didn’t seem like someone who follows any kind of conventions or seeks companionship of any kind, much less someone who would have a pet.”

Zoreth rumbled softly, his mandibles clicking. “She is not on ship. Since the house has parted with Argurumal, we have begun a breeding program to preserve our dorashnal. Lila was selected to whelp in this cycle and so I left her on the fleet’s mothership.”

“I see,” she murmured. “You must miss her.”

The male grunted in agreement. From the corner of her eye, she saw his head turn toward Talech to peer at him speculatively. “I did not see any evidence of dorashnal. Did we abandon one? I can reverse our trajectory—”

“Unnecessary,” Talech interrupted stonily, and Beverly’s heart broke a little for him as she silently cursed herself.

Damn her for bringing it up.

She glanced back at Zoreth and shook her head. “She was... changed. Talech had to destroy her to save us. If he hadn’t, Kaylar and Meg probably wouldn’t have made it off Earth alive. I probably would have died of my own wounds as well,” she admitted.

“Changed?” Zoreth hissed.

Beverly quickly described the appearance of E-302 and what Talech told her. “It was before my time, so I have no idea what they did to her.”

Zoreth hummed thoughtfully. “Dorashnal are special hybrids created by the Argurma. We domesticated the wild dorashas, which resemble what you described but considerably smaller,and spliced their genes with certain features of Argurma genes to create a species that was capable of bonding to us on a deeper level. Even domesticated dorashas tend to carry characteristics of their wild heritage. Removing her vibrissae and submitting her to aggressive gene therapy might have caused a spontaneous regression as the species is highly adaptive. Her size I cannot explain.”

“For military use, I imagine,” she replied with disgust. “That seemed to be their main interest in Talech from what I understand.”

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