And nowhere near enough to impress the vreign and other rulers of Luster Station.
At one point, in the quietest lull, he went to the secondary bay. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to see or hear. He stood in front of the rock, antennae spread wide.
Nothing. Just like the aftermath of his encounter with Adeline.
After he’d left her quarters, he hadn’t tried to contact her. Nor had she reached out to him.
“It was a mistake.”
Teq closed his eyes for a moment, hearing the echo of his own thoughts. He turned to face his apex. “You wanted”—and that was his problem too, wasn’t it, the wanting?—“a new life for your orcs.”
“And instead I may lose it all.” Mag paced a tight circle around the rock. “I should never have contacted the Luster or the IDA.”
He shouldn’t have. And yet…
I didn’t even care that it sounded impossible.
Devotion and desperation were a dangerous mix. Adeline’s only chance to protect her hatchling had sent her fleeing into space. Mag’s aspiration for a better future might knock them all out of the sky.
Briefly, Teq thought of Adeline’s dead ex. The anonymous Earther male deserved no consideration, not after lifting his hand against his wife-mate. But whatever impulses had driven his transgression was a punishing reminder how volatile and destructive feelings might be.
“The orcs have always survived on grit and brute strength.” Teq realized he was grasping futilely with all four hands, but what else did he have?
Mag’s antennae sagged. “This time, that might not be enough.” He put a hand on Teq’s upper shoulder, but instead of reassuring, the gesture felt as if the apex were holding himself upright. “Come. You haven’t eaten or rested for too long. This might not be a problem you can slag, but I won’t let you crumble into dust.”
Together, they went to the galley. It was uroondu again, and many of the orcs were assembled there for the shared meal. A few were gaming together, and Sil was in one corner quietly strumming his synthetar, the myriad multicolored beams of laser light flickering under his fingers.
But Teq’s focus locked only on the Earther female seated nearby. The sparkles of light bounced off the slymusk silverglow on the walls, limning her features in all the hues of the universe. The i’lva within him spun like a trillion galaxies within that universe, and if not for his supposed grit and strength, he might’ve gone to his knees before her. As it was, he felt himself being drawn closer, as if the light and the music were elemental forces.
“Sil hasn’t touched his synthetar for so long,” Mag said quietly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have contacted the IDA, but the Earther females have already brought more life and hope to the ship than all the yield from all the rocks over so many lightyears.” He tilted his head to Teq. “Not to diminish your exertions, crusher.”
No, mining space debris had kept them alive, but… There was more to life than ice and carbon.
Unable to hold himself back anymore—and he wondered if any number of hands could’ve stopped him—Teq angled toward Adeline. Ollie was sitting on the floor in front of Sil, swaying slightly with the music. The lenses he wore made his eyes almost as large as an orc’s, as if the hatchling was becoming like them.
When Teq stopped just outside their little orbit, Adeline glanced up at him. She didn’t smile, and the laser light reflecting from her dark eyes sliced him to the core.
After a heartbeat where he wondered if all his ichor would bleed from him, the i’lva pooling in a molten slag at her feet, she twisted her knees to one side, opening a place on the cushioned bench beside her. She tapped her fingers in that space.
He hesitated another moment—he needed that time to try to shove his guts back into his carapace—then settled next to her. The benches were orc-sized, but somehow his shoulders pressed against hers. He could put one arm or two around her…
“We’ve missed you,” she murmured. Then she quickly revised, “You haven’t been around.”
Ah, she did not have a void-viper’s fangs, but he felt the strike through the unarmored area beneath the arm he didn’t put around her. It sank deep. “I was hoping to find something of value in the tailings from our last salvage.”
“How did it go?”
He tried out the Earther shrug, mostly as an excuse to let himself bump into her again. “What we can sell and what will impress at the Luster are not the same.”
“I’m sorry.”
They were both quiet for a moment, listening to the drifting melody of the synthetar.
“It sounds a little sad,” she said. “The music, I mean.”
Teq kept his voice low so as not to break the spell. “It’s an old orc song. It was written by the last crystal carver, before reaping and selling raw materials became more urgent than singing wistfully about rocks.”
“Are there lyrics or just the tune?”