Page 1 of Crush
Chapter 1
“Our fortune has come to us at last!”
The pronouncement rang through the alcoves and columns of theDeepWander’s gather-hall, and Teq should have roared along with the rest of the orcs. The Omega Reclamation Crew had been extracting and salvaging its way across the lesser galaxies for three generations now, and all that grueling work and peril was finally paying off.
Orwouldpay off, as soon as they found the right buyer for the aforementioned fortune.
So why did he have such a bad feeling about this?
Teq didn’t evendofeelings. As the crew’s chief crusher, he’d lost all feeling except for the unending rattle of the hammers and grinders under his command, every other sensation permanently numbed. And he would’ve preferred spending this time smashing something to bits.
But his cousin, who’d been marked apex while still in the egg, had called them together to declare their turn of fate. Mag had the right and duty as apex—not to mention the sheer size, strength, and savagery—to point their path, and if he said this was their way through the darkness of deep space, Teq would be right behind him.
For the moment though, he stayed slouched in one of the farthest nooks, all four arms crossed over his thorax. The tense stance strained the utility sash looped around his chest, and the bulge of his pectoral emphasized the glyph carved into his skin marking him as crusher. From that vigilant distance, Teq watched his brethren.
Most of the gather-hall was even darker than space; the center of the ship was designed to look like the ancient caverns of their homeworld rather than an asteroid mining vessel. But in honor of this proclamation, the thick pillars carved from the plasteel walls had been gilded with silverglow, and by its light, the orcs’ blue-bronze hides gleamed almost metallic.
“Although we’ve found our fortune, what we really need is galactic credits,” Mag continued. He waited for the wave of wry chuckles to rise and lapse. “For that we need a buyer. So I have procured an invitation to the Salvagers Luster.”
He paused again for another ripple of response: uncertain grumbles this time. The silverglow glinted on suspiciously rolling black eyes and pointed lower tusks thrusting out in consternation.
“It’s true no orc has ever attended the Luster,” Mag continued. “To the rest of the universe—by slag and by sludge, even to other miners and sifters—the Omega Reclamation Crew is nothing. We may as well not exist.” He flared the upper scales of his carapace, inciting an instinctive threat display in a few of the orcs nearest him. “This is finally our chance to claim our place beyond the emptiest reaches of space.”
Another roar from the crew, but through his antennae, Teq detected the half-heartedness hidden under the tough scales. It was one thing to plunge chained explosives into an icy volcanic moon or wrangle a sungrazer comet out of its decaying fiery orbit; it was something else entirely to be rejected. The Omega Reclamation Crew had never warranted even the briefest acknowledgment from followers of the Luster. To breach the inner sanctum of the grandest galactic prospectors and scavengers…
But if Mag said they must engage with the Luster luminaries, Teq would follow his apex into the maw of death itself.
Which they might be facing if they couldn’t get hefty credits for their latest find. As if dealing with the high-rolling, sanctimonious Luster vreign and his people wouldn’t be bad enough. No one respected orcs enough to give them the time of local solar coordinates, much less cut them in on any of the lucrative Luster Station connections and contracts.
“We will take our place in the Luster,” Mag was saying. “But before we get there, we could use a bit of shining up ourselves. So our sweet Amma has found us wife-mates.”
Mmm-whaaat?
Slowly, Teq straightened away from the wall, glaring in disbelief at the wizened orc female who trundled up beside Mag.Wife-mates? For the orcs?Mag hadn’t told him any ofthispart of the plan.
Even before they’d left their decimated homeworld behind, wife-mates had become more myth than reality. With the slow, cold collapse of their planetary core, more and more clutches had hatched mostly males. The few emerged females—Amma had been one of the last before the orc ships escaped their dying planet—and those who passaged later hadn’t been enough to meet the demand for wife-mates. In the last generations, barely enough of the artificially manufactured and cryogenically preserved eggs survived to hatching, and the incubation grottos had gone silent and empty.
Just better for an orc to tell himself he didn’t need a wife-mate at all.
Where had Amma and Sil found females to bond with their desperate crew?
“Once we sell our fortune, every orc who wants a wife-mate will have a chance. But until then, the Intergalactic Dating Agency is sending a handful”—Mag held up one six-fingered hand—“of females from a place called Earth. Amma, will you tell this tale?”
As old Amma stumped to the edge of the dais, Teq tuned to the orcs around him. Mutters of curiosity and sighs of longing ruffled his antennae.
In a nook nearby, standing with the rest of the survey and trial squad, Dorn said under his breath, “The place is called Dirt? That’s promising. Of all things, orcs require dirt and rock.”
That wasn’t all though, Teq mused. Once, his people had done more than extracting and salvaging; they’d been gardeners of minerals, singers of stone, philosophers of ancient hollows. But raw materials torn from crude ore were more in demand than beauty and dreams.
Which was just how the universe was, he reminded himself. Dirt and rock were at least plentiful and reliable.
Amma gesticulated above the crowd. Even from the dais with her top two arms lifted high, she was still so small the orcs in the front row had to duck politely under her gesture.
“Praise the silent dark!” she intoned.
“And the shine below,” they responded. Teq jutted his tusks lest he bite through his tongue. What had the shine done for them lately?
“The Big Sky outpost of the Intergalactic Dating Agency has quite the reputation for sending the finest Earther ladies to seek life-mates,” Amma said. “But nowhere else in the universe will they find orcs!”
