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 “Those books are outdated.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 theirtechnology.” 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 theseat 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.