Page 73 of Taken to Kor
Deena nods and I notice that her hand has begun to clutch mine tighter and tighter. “How…do you feel…about the beach?”
I grin, elated, shocked, pleased. “You’d give them your beach, Deena?” I say.
“It’s not mine. It’s for the humans, and you know as well as I do that I have no desire to babysit all those people. Let Svera do it. It can be a port controlled by humans. They can let whoever come onto it that they want so long as those beings include Niahhorru.” She gives Svera a questioning look then, but Svera just frowns.
“I haven’t said we’ll move, of course, we have a good setup here.”
“Just wait til you see it. You’ll be sold on sight.”
Svera smiles, then frowns, then strokes Deena’s leg. “You should be concentrating on this…”
“Centare, keep talking…” She squeezes everything together. I pull her hair back from her shoulders, hoping to keep her cool, even though it is already cool in here. Surprisingly so, given this moon’s awful climate. “We found the human satellite, Svera.”
“You did?” She gasps. “How was it? Are they advanced? Did they treat you well?”
“Centare,” Deena hacks out on a laugh. “They’re carpets.” Her voice twists up in a mirror of her expression. I drop to my knees and press my face closer to hers, wishing I could take her pain, or offer her anything in this moment.
“Pirate, what do you need from me?” I whisper.
“Tell me…tell Svera…about the beach…”
I smile and I tell my pirate about the beach as she brings the first hybrid Niahhorru-human kits into the known galaxy, one after the next after the next. Quintenanrret passes them off to my pirates, much to Svera’s shock.
“Is that safe?” She asks me at a point, some half-solar later.
“There is nothing safer than a Niahhorru kit in the galaxy. Every pirate is its father or its mother.”
Svera’s mouth slams shut and she smiles at that.
It takes all lunar, but Deena manages to persevere and bring all six kits into the universe healthy and safe and on her own. I think at some point, as I look down into the little brown face of one of my own little girls, I start to sob. In fact, I think we might all be crying. Except for Deena. She’s laughing like the madwoman that she is.
Svera is looking confused as she coddles one kit close to her chest — a boy. There are two girls and four boys and already the competition to name them is fierce. Lines in the sand have been drawn. Tevbarannos states that he will blast all of us if we don’t name one of the kits after him. The healers have an impossible time trying to wrangle kits away from them and check them over. They appear healthy, but much, much too small for Niahhorru kits. Their tines are so soft. Like feathers. I touch the little brown cheek of the little girl in my hands and place her on Deena’s chest with reluctance. I don’t want to put her down.
“Shrov!” I curse as I lean away from Deena, holding my little girl. “Gerannu! Where are the atomic rings I ordered?”
“Shrov! They’re on the ship! Nikkowerranorru, go get them.”
“Yougo get them. I wasn’t the one who forgot them…”
“Someone go get them!”
“Centare! You shroving idiot, don’t take the kit with you!”
“I want to keep holding him. I barely got a turn…”
“Stars!” Svera shouts, bursting out laughing as she takes one of my babies towards her mate. I snarl and point a finger towards him threateningly, but Svera just shakes her head at me sternly, then says to her friend, still spread open on the nest trying to recover her breath as she gives birth to whatever alien thing comes after. “Are you pirates always like this?”
Deena smiles sleepily, sluggishly and caresses the soft hairs growing out of one of the kit’s tiny heads. Both females got human hair and appear to have no tines, while all four boys got tines that I expect to harden to be stronger than even mine. My pride, in this moment, is limitless.
“On special occasions…they’re much worse.”
Svera laughs and has tears in her eyes as she returns my kit to my arms after having shown it to her mate. He nods at me and I see his hands flexing, as if he’s wishing he had his own kits with him in this moment. “We’ll leave you to celebrate as a family. My mate and I will return to ours and contemplate what you’ve told us about this arrangement. A common Niahhorru-Voraxian-Human trading ground and a new potential base for all of us Humans to live on together?”
Her gaze falls to the far wall where Fifi and Quintenanrret stand speaking about the smallest of my kits — one of the little girls. But I know that even though she may be small, she’ll grow up to be like her mother — the toughest pirate Kor has seen yet. As I watch the pair of healers, however, I notice something odd happening in Fifi’s face.
Her gaze is trained on Quintenanrret with focus and her forehead…well, it’s alight in a whole host of colors that I know only one way to interpret. Svera is covering her mouth with her hand, evidently already having noticed.
“Oh my,” Fifi says, taking hold of Quintenanrret’s arm. He stares at her agape.
