Ava Greasemonkey, page 5
“Would you have still accepted knowing what you know now?” the queen spat out, the Phor closest to her wincing as acid hit them.
Ava grimaced as well, watching the sizzle on their fuzzy shoulders.
“Affirmative, we would have. You know we are in need of resources to expand. Our other ships have taken similar risks for their contracts. You cannot think yourself above this. Everything is for the collective. You will remember this from when we assigned you your own ship and harem. We can assign another queen mother if you are not in alignment with our needs.”
The queen visibly bristled at this. Her antennas went flying and her large abdomen started twitching over her many pillows. The threat hit its mark though. She took a more conciliatory appearance with her antennas smoothing out and her tone more mild. “Very well, we will be in contact.”
“Please let us know. Frequent status reports.” The hologram clicked out.
The queen mother looked over her harem and sighed. The drones were all silent for a minute, not wanting to offend her, their bodies silently vibrating. Keeping up a steady buzz, the one nearest her reached out and caressed her side.
Ava wasn’t interested in seeing their lovefest, so she looked away from the feed back to the Vorbax papers, disgusted, until she heard the queen cry, “Enough. It is enough. We will follow our orders. The video feeds for that area are offline. The Tuxa don’t want us observing them as well as the prisoners. I want only the collective to handle their daily upkeep and to be our eyes down there. I don’t trust our usual contracted staff to engage with either the Tuxa or Vorbax. We have to be careful enough with this, and if we ask the contractors for help they’ll likely try to extort us because it’s different from their stated agreements. We will petition the Tuxa for camera access in the main hallway at the very least as a compromise.”
The collective started discussing security measures on the ship and extra barriers that could be put in place in case the Tuxa and the Vorbax became combative. As this ship was primarily a transport for cargo, not a warship, there was not much in the way of extra measures already built in other than to depressurize the whole compartment as a last resort, killing all inside.
Ava frowned, silently watching. That’s brutal. She observed the queen visibly bristle when this was suggested, knowing that if it came to that she would most likely be relocated back to her home planet and lose her prized position.
Ava half listened, still clicking through the Phor logs, until she heard the queen mention, “That slave Human can help as well. Tell her to observe when they think they are alone like she does for the shipments. She can also handle most of the upkeep so we don’t have to stretch ourselves too thin. Tell her she needs to observe the Tuxa as much as the Vorbax.”
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 these ways, 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 an open 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 they extended 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.
She kept a closed expression for a moment longer before uncrossing her arms and sighing. It wasn’t his fault for the way things were. The food also looked better than she had seen for a long time, and despite recent events, she was starving.
“Gods, Ebel. I could kiss you.” Ava forced a smile and almost skipped to go grab a fork.
“Ew, that gross thing you talked about where you put your mouth on mine? I’ve seen the Human information videos. Please don’t.” He put his antennas down in mock horror and opened up his fanged mouth so wide she could look down his entire tooth-filled throat. He looked relieved she was eating and not protesting anymore.
Ava made a kissy noise and began eating the food, ignoring the anxiety in her stomach. She might have several big problems looming, but right now she was going to enjoy this meal.
Chapter 6
The meal Ava ate energized her.
She figured she would get her first visit out of the way before sleep, so she put the heat suit back on. With any luck it would silence her mind to not have the first visit looming. Hopefully then I can relax. When she took the stupid suit off after going up into the vents for the second time in one cycle, she wanted a good period of time before she had to put it back on again.
With that in mind, she made it a two-part journey in the vents and checked out the cargo hold before heading to the animal cells. That way there would be no pressure for her to get back in the vents if she just did it all now.
Besides, after she got around to showing Ebel the fruit picture, they spent some time while she was eating looking it up and finding out it was edible. And supposed to be delicious. Well worth the detour.
Now in the cargo hold, in the still-pressurized side panels containing the trees, Ava held the small red fruit in her hands and sniffed it. Ebel said it was something called a yavi fruit. The database came up with similar fruits, and one was called a cherry on the planet her mother originally came from. Her mother never liked to talk about Earth, the planet she was from, so Ava never heard of a cherry before.
The Phor had more information on the plants from Earth than they did on the Humans that started there. It was kind of strange. It wasn’t the first time that she wondered if it was by design, like the Humans were purposely being hidden on the records.
Ebel also asked her to bring some of the yavi fruit back for their queen to placate her. She was apparently still angry and was taking it out on her drones. There was a chance that with something brought back by Ava that was different, she might reconsider how much observing Ava had to do. Maybe she could just be continually sent back to pick the fruit the entire trip instead.
That would be nice.
She stepped into the canopy and breathed deep, pretending she was in a forest full of the trees. They smelled delicious.
Ava tried to spread out her picking so her pilfering wouldn’t be noticed, and even then was still able to fill her bag almost to the top with tons to spare, as there were berries on almost every branch. After the bag was full, she cinched it down so none would spill out on the way back.
The fruit was delicious like the logs said, and she felt a pang in her heart as she ate it, thinking of what her mother would have thought of the berries. Would they have reminded her of Earth?
She shook her head to clear the thoughts and munched on one, wiping away the juice as it dribbled down her chin as she climbed back into the vents. She ate four more while she moved around the side walls to see the payloads in the containers and what was possible to grab.
Ava took a break after she climbed back into the main part of the ship and out of the cargo hold. She sat back in the vents in an area that opened up wider due to the filtration unit housed there and snacked on a fifth fruit. It was amazing having something actually grown and not from the food processor.
Maybe if I keep one of these pits I could try growing one of the trees myself in the solarium. She held the pit under her flashlight and tried to see how the seed was constructed, turning it around in the narrow beam of light.
A soft squeaking drew her eyes to one of the ninety-degree bends in the vent in front of her. Ava sat quietly as she saw a pom stick its head out, not daring to move an inch and startle it. A smile curled on her mouth. She rarely got to see one in person; they were so skittish. Their sense of smell was apparently fantastic though, as it clearly wanted a better sniff of the yavi fruit.
Ava let out a soft, “Hey you,” once its entire small fuzzy body came forward, its beady eyes reflecting in the little light her flashlight gave off. It looked like a fuzzy ball on legs. It squeaked and ran away once it heard her, its long tail the last to disappear around the corner.
Ava sighed in disappointment, the hand holding the fruit out dropping to the floor of the vent. They were a nuisance on every ship, but Ava couldn’t bring herself to hate the little creatures just trying to survive.
She put the pit back in the bag with the rest of the fruit. Then she took another out and put it in the middle of the vent for the poms. Ava was determined to be friends with at least one of them. She cinched her bag shut again, wiped her hands on the suit, and made her way back to the engine room vents.
There she lowered the bag down into the engine room shaft with some rope and banged on the sides to alert Ebel that she'd dropped something if he was still in the control room.
Ava sat a second, twiddling her thumbs. She knew she was stalling; she didn’t need to come back to drop the goods off.
She shook her head and forced herself to move without waiting to see if Ebel got the fruits. The trip over to the animal corridor was not as long as it was to the transport area. Not near as much climbing either, thankfully.
The breeze had cooled her off while she sat to eat the fruits earlier, but she still felt ripe underneath the suit from all the sweating. She’d need to take a shower first thing when she got back down. She tugged at the suit, feeling it constrict around her, and felt disgusting.
The six animal cells were all large in diameter, each a ten-by-ten square, with a row of smaller crates on the north end of the space. There were also a few tanks that could hold aquatic animals, but Ava had never seen them used before. All the lights were on, briefly blinding her as she looked out of the first grate in the area to see the layout.
Ava lay flat—it was too narrow in the vent to sit up—and rubbed her eyes until they adjusted.
Then, looking down, she saw that the four Vorbax were each in a separate cell. There were no beds to speak of, but someone had thrown a pallet and mattress to sleep on in each one. There was a hole in the back with a grate that served as a toilet and for cleaning whatever creature was on board. The remaining two cells were filled with Tuxa napping. Only those cell doors were wide open.
Ava watched the sleeping Tuxa rhythmically breathe for a moment, hoping they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere else on the ship. She never directly talked with one before and really never wanted to. Her body shuddered involuntarily. They gave off a bad vibe.
If the Tuxa did venture out from this area, it would make everyone on board on edge. Ava was glad she had her own place down in the engine hall away from all the chaos. It was the first time she was grateful about being so closed away. It was enough that she would probably need to be around them some when she shared in helping out with the prisoners like the queen requested.
Ava got on her belly to slide along the vent that pumped air into each of the cells and traveled the entire length to peer into the warehouse room next to the animal holding area. She moved slowly to make sure she didn’t make any noise and carefully peeked through the grate. More Tuxa were there, looking like they were still just setting up. There was a lot of activity in that room, so Ava quickly turned around and left, feeling anxious from their pacing. She would have to come back to observe more later. Or not.
The Vorbax are more interesting anyways.
Now that Ava had scoped out the entire area, she turned around and came back to hover over the Vorbax, stopping and pushing into the grate to get the best view she could. The video logs of them were fresh on her mind, but it was different seeing them in person. They looked huge, or maybe it was the angle. Or maybe it was just her perception from being on the smaller side herself. She shifted her eyes side to side to compare them as best she could from her vantage point.
