CHAPTER 61
TAC’MOT
This went to hells fast.
I bound across the distance as rapidly as I can, Tara held tight to me as we flee the melee. I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t know why, and I care not: I simply need to see Tara safely out of it.
Her babies?
Tara has babies?
I’m struggling to process an overload of information.
We’d been in the middle of discussing rescue plans with some hobs and other assorted peoples, when a massive ship landed. Not friendly arrivals. They even harshly retaliated on a pair of Rakhii that were simply trying to protect their humans. Humans. Not Gryfala, but their human mates.
I chatter loudly, thinking of Brax in the same situation.
When we hear a shout to ‘Stop and release the Gryfala’—I do not stop. My thighs burn as I extend my stride and kick it to get to our ship. The main cargo bay is shut. “Lem, Lem, Lem,” I pant to the universe. “You better not have locked that teveking stock door!”
It’s so new an ability, that I forget that Tara can understand me now. And now she moves from merely scared out of her wits to utterly horrified and scared of her wits. “We can’t get in?”
“Vssshp,” I try to reassure her as I hop around the side, our pursuers rounding the ship with me and gaining fast as they take to the air in flight formation. “Remember that first day, when you got me shot?”
Tara’s hands tighten. “Sorry about that—”
I exhale hard. “Forgiven. Just…We need that door open now, and then we need it to close after us—fast.”
“Great! Hey, maybe we can throw that thing on them! The one that attacked my face.”
I spare her a shocked look. “Only if we have to, though Culcs are used for home defense,” I muse on a half-wheeze.
We do throw that Culc at them. It blocks the laser blast intended for me—I have never been shot at so many times in my life as I have since I met this female—and the hob falls back with a guttural yell as the injured Culc adheres itself to his face. The Culc’s buyer is going to be furious! My toxin is rolling down my skin like sweat, but I can’t risk getting near the door to knock them back for fear of taking a laser blast.
Finally, the door clangs shut before the next closest hob can squeeze through. The Culc however, manages it, and I exhale a sigh of relief.
Watching it scamper off seems to unsettle her deeply.
“It’s getting away,” she says in a horrified voice.
“We’ll catch it again,” I tell her. “Just…don’t go anywhere alone until we do.”
She looks at me sharply, as if assessing if I’m jesting. Suddenly, the floor below us seems to tilt and rock. “It’s all right,” I assure Tara. “This is Lem breaking through what is no doubt a sanctioned ship lockdown.” These hobs do not want anyone to get away with the… humans.
Tara is not a Gryfala at all.
An overload of information.
“They looked like Grake,” Tara says weakly.
“They are hobs. As is Grake,” I confirm. I turn to look at her, absurdly giddy, perhaps because we can converse. It’s a gift I’ll never take for granted again.
“Tac!” Grake’s voice echoes in the cavern that is the cargo bay. “You two all right?”
“Are you unhurt?” I ask her, and she throws her arms around me and starts to cry. But I do catch an “I’m fine!” in amongst the sobs and a spate of words I don’t understand, not because of a fault on the translator’s part, but because her words are simply tumbling together so fast. “I think we’re fine, Grake,” I reassure him.
“Creator. It feels odd that I can understand you,” Grake tells her, trying to talk her out of the state she’s working herself up to.
For an extra fee, the Na’riths promised to remote-force upgrades on all our tech, but they magnanimously cut us a deal on Grake and Brax’s, considering theirs would have been done at no cost once Homeland pushed through automatic language upgrades to all its citizens’ translators.
Tara gives him a wobbly smile. “It does feel odd! But it’s amazing. And I need help—”
He stalls her gently. “First, you need to see to Brax before he gets sicker.”
Tara drops off of me. “Oh no! Brax is sick?”