With a slight growl I interpret as annoyance, Verig lifts me, holds me over the side, and drops me like a sack of grain. My feet hit the ground, but I lose my footing and land on my ass, looking like a fool in front of a group of orcs, several of whom bare their tusks.
Verig, despite his promise to Atox, ignores the snarls aimed at me and addresses a female orc heading toward us. She wears a leather tunic over trousers, but it’s the two knives in the harness slung over her chest that interest me. One looks like a kitchen knife used for flaying meat. The other is a seven-inch dagger. Definitelynota utility knife. The material isn’t quite metal or stone. A mix perhaps, though I don’t know how that could be made given the lack of industry on Kovos.
Atox carried a knife of similar design in his harness, but not Verig or any of the other orcs I’ve seen. This woman wears thoseknives and a small ax at her hip with a confidence that matches any guard in my colony. Perhaps she’s a warrior and the orcs don’t oppress their women like the men of New Earth do.
Her lower lip curls as she flashes her tusks and slowly runs her eyes over me, scrutinizing me as I rise to my feet and brush the dirt off my pants. The contempt rolling off her is so thick I step back, bumping into Verig. He pushes me away from him, none too gently either.
Contempt-filled Orcan words fly at Verig, who nods. The woman’s dark green eyes grow more hateful as she sneers at me. At least she reacts to me with honesty, which surpasses how my own people treated me. They pretended to care about me and lulled me into a false sense of safety before betraying me.
Fuck, this goes beyond mere betrayal. They pulled my world apart, leaving me to question everything I thought I knew about the other species here. What if everything they said about the orcs, vints, bantarans, and moxxels have been lies?
When we landed on Kovos, Council said their highest priority was the safety of all humans in the colony. Before that, they said medicine on Kovos would save my mom. They’ve been lying from the beginning.
Another thought strikes, completely shattering the last fragments of hope within me. What if theMayflowerdoesn’t come next month? Or ever?
Despair settles into the deepest recesses of my being.
I’m utterly alone.
“Voken,” the woman orc says to me, not hiding her sneer.
“Hi,” I say back, clueless as to whatvokenmeans. I throw in a smile, but that doesn’t improve the situation. Verig flicks a hand at the woman, as if dismissing her, and steers his gorja back toward the forest.
The woman’s eyes travel up and down me once more without a hint of approval or welcome.
“I’m Paloma,” I introduce myself while offering my hand.
She stares at my hand. Right, that’s a human custom. I switch to a wave, wondering if I should be so generous with random gestures without knowing how these orcs will interpret them. I flash another smile, hoping it will at least make me look friendly. “What’s your name?”
She cocks her head, so I point to myself and say, “Pa–lo–ma.”
“Polowma,” she says slowly, imitating my name, then follows with, “Vek avi nok.”
“Can you understand me?”
She stares at me.
Okay, then. She doesn’t have a language chip. It appears orcs and humans have more in common than they realize. Neither colony buys language chips from the bantarans to give to everyone, only the people they deem important. The males.
She grabs my upper arm and practically drags me along, pulling me inside a cave. I hate dark spaces. I’ve had a fear of them since our time on the ship from Earth. When that cendagi… I shove the memory aside. The past is just that. Past.
Except I can’t breathe, just thinking about it. I yank free of her hold and race out of the cave. I promptly slam into the massive orc blocking the entrance.
“Fegra ti.” The woman points down the wide tunnel. Fear of the damn be damned, it appears I don’t have a choice. Yet again.
Steeling my nerves, I focus on one foot at a time as I move deeper into the tunnel that widens to fifteen feet. This isn’t just a simple cave, but a massive tunnels system. A dark, cold maze of stone passages with no end in sight.
Round light disks embedded every ten feet in the tunnel walls light our way. I wonder how the orcs power them since there’s no sunlight inside here, no obvious electrical conduits, and from what I’ve seen in my three years on Kovos, not a single battery on the entire planet. New Earth uses solar panels and wind powered electricity, but we don’t have the materials to make batteries, andthe orcs level of industry is less advanced than ours. So where did the orcs get these lights?
I’ll ponder that question later as I have more important things to worry about, like where my new guard is taking me. She shoves me to get me moving again.
The dim light makes my fear of the dark manageable since I can still see who and what is around me. A few smaller orcs, children, race by in the opposite direction, heading outside the tunnel. The lead child, who appears to be eight or nine, glances up at me and comes to a dead stop. The other two children barrel into her.
That’s when I see it… a smile on the little girl who stopped short. At least I think it’s a smile. The corners of her mouth hitch up, revealing tiny tusks, but I swear that smile reaches her eyes.
Seeing kids running, playing, andsmilinggives me a glimmer of hope that the orcs aren’t all bad. That they care about their kids.
And I have to say, orc kids are cute. A lot cuter than the adults. The oldest of the three kids, the girl, wears her hair in a braid down the middle of her back, reaching half way to her backside. The ridges on her forehead look like baby fat almost, and her skin doesn’t look nearly as thick as Atox’s. And dimples! She has the most adorable dimples.
