“I told you,” Ollie whispered back.
With one more glance at each other, the women started down the corridor. A matching doorway stood open on the other end.
“Why is it so dark over there?” Kinsley murmured. “Don’t like that at all.”
“Are we sure we’re at the right ship?” Maria asked in a tiny voice.
“You can’t rendezvous across a few million light-years without both sides knowing the coordinates,” Carmen said with Ollie-levels of certainty that Adeline assumed translated to some amount of accuracy.
“Orcs don’t see the same way we do,” he announced. “Maybe they just forgot to turn on the lights.” He took a step forward, just beyond her reflexive reach. “Hey,” he called. “Us Earthers use electromagnetic wavelengths from four to eight hundred nanometers. Otherwise sometimes we’re afraid of the dark. Some of us, just sometimes.”
“Ollie,” Adeline put a no-nonsense clip in her voice. “Come back here.”
At the end of the hall, the black square bloomed with a shimmering silver glow.
Ollie glanced back at her with a big smile. “See? Now you don’t have to be scared. It’s gonna be an adventure!” He spun around again and raced down the hall toward that beckoning light.
“Oliver!” Gritting her teeth—the IDA had given her a minor surgery they assured her would fix her TMJ pain forever; too bad they didn’t know Ollie—she hustled down the hall after her son, squinting against that sudden light.
Just as his bloodcurdling shriek rang out.
Chapter 3
At the piercing cry, Teq leaped forward to grab the hatchling, swinging the small one away with one of his lower arms. Instinctively, he spread the outer shell of his carapace to shelter the young being from whatever had frightened it.
The hatchling stared up at him with white-ringed eyes, and Teq returned the look with the same bewilderment. He’d known that the aliens would be…well, alien, but what a peculiar little creature he held. So squishy.
He tilted his head. “Greetings, Earther hatchling.”
“Greetings, crusher.”
Teq’s antennae twitched in surprise that the alien hatchling had noticed the glyph etched into his thorax. “Are you injured?”
A mighty blow reverberated against his carapace. “Let him go!”
As powerful as the attack was, of course it couldn’t be worse than a tunnel collapse or micrometeoroid strike. Still, rather annoying. He glanced over his shoulder.
And then looked down, down at the enraged Earther female. From the IDA spec sheets he’d reviewed once they’d been told about this absurd emergency wife-mate plan, he’d known the Earthers would be small, but this one barely came up to his lower shoulder—even though she was bristling with fury. “I thought he might’ve fallen into the slymusk.”
“Put him down. Can’t you see he’s terrified of you?”
The accusation stung.Hewas terrifying?Hewasn’t the one running around, screaming, and boggling with somewhat creepy, googly eyes. Not to mention being squishy.
He dropped the hatchling at once, and it would’ve fallen if the female hadn’t grabbed it and swung it up into her own arms—of which she only had two. Despite her lack of appendages and her slenderness, at least compared to an orc, she seemed startlingly strong. Teq shouldn’t have felt anything much through his carapace, but the place she’d touched throbbed tenderly. He resisted the urge to rub at the spot.
“Not scared ofhim,” the hatchling said in its piping voice. “Of the…slymusk? I wanted to pet it but then it tried to grab me.” He held out one hand—a mere five digits waving about—to display the gelatinous goo stuck there.
The female caught the waving hand around the wrist. “Oh my god. Is it poisonous? How do we get it off?”
Despite her apparent distress, her voice was lower than the hatchling’s, with a husky quality that vibrated through Teq’s antennae.
“Slymusk excretions are not toxic,” he assured her. “They only interact with some minerals, and youdidask us to turn on the lights.” He motioned with his antennae toward the silverglow on the walls.
The hatchling craned away from the female to follow his gesture. “That ginormous slug thing makes the light with its mucus? Oh wow, that’s so cool.”
“Yes,” Teq agreed distractedly. “The bioluminescent traces are cold.”
The same could not be said for his own ichor. The pulse through his body was surging high and heavy—and very,veryhot.