Page 13 of Ava Greasemonkey

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 theseways, 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 anopen 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 theyextended 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.

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