Page 10 of Ava Greasemonkey

Watching him raptly, she could see that his eyes were placed like hers, but bigger and without any white around the pupil. He also had a similar nose and similar mouth to hers. On his head, around the fins, there looked to be a small area of vestigial scales that were not present on the rest of their sleek bodies.

She could see a silga string winding around the side of his neck and down his spine. Ava had never seen the silga strings used before, but had read about them. The string wound itself into pressure points to serve as a kill switch into the nervous system, incapacitating the wearer when triggered.

Looking at the Tuxa next to them, she saw that they each carried a small device, which she figured was the control to each of the strings.

Ava watched as the Vorbax and their Tuxa guard moved into the cargo bay and walked across the bay floor. They apparently weren’t waiting for a Phor escort to move into the ship.

Wert is going to hate this.Ava wondered if they even knew the way. She stayed there as the Tuxa with the Vorbax left, the hull now feeling empty after so much action.

The rest of the Tuxa still in the cargo bay finalized the disembark procedures for their transport before leaving the ship themselves. The bay doors closed with a squeal from the gears. The cargo bay was quiet once again.

Ava sat still in the vent, replaying what she had seen and thinking speculatively, biting her lip while she was deep in thought. The Vorbax were new, and she didn’t know a thing about them. Her body was tense, sitting there in the dark, thinking it all over. Her brain buzzed too much to even notice the silence now.

A loud beep startled her into movement.

She grabbed her knapsack and moved quickly to vacate the area before it became depressurized again, leaving the romance books there for next time.

The vents at the top closed a few moments after she left, sealing the area off.

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. Thattransport 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.

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