Page 42 of Ava Stargazer (Planet Xai #2)

An alert sounded in a different engine hall. In a different control room across the stars. In a different Phor cargo transport ship.

Nuor had sent Ebel an alert concerning the planet Xai. Ebel had been ignoring messages lately after receiving her first one that Ava was healthy and well, but any alert from Nuor and Xai always warranted a hurried click and a scan from him nowadays. It was the ones from Ava he was avoiding.

The click rewarded him as he saw his Ava standing there, tall and proud, in a recent photo with her DNA coded next to it in a petition to be listed as a part of Xai. She had sent the picture to Nuor, posing with the status change and giving a big smile with a wave.

Ebel stared, his antennas raised at attention, and he chittered. He drank in the sight of her with his convex eyes. She looks healthy.

He didn’t move a moment, his emotions uncertain. At the bottom Nuor wrote, “She is still trying to reach you, Ebel...”

Ebel had been avoiding looking at the message boards. Why would Ava want to contact me? He loathed himself most days. She shouldn’t contact him. She shouldn’t look back. But seeing her, the picture of her with a big smile, broke through the wall he had built around himself in his self-hatred. It spurred him into action. I need to check.

He kept the picture up, then opened the feed and searched for her name. The memory of her sweet voice echoed through his mind. He was becoming disheartened until he came across an old message where Nuor told him where to look. His antenna raised as he read it. Then he found more.

Several old messages, in fact. He found them in the oddest of places, once he searched for the text that he found. And one not so old, sent just a cycle ago, after her picture was registered as a part of Xai’s database. The message was on the back channel for contractors. It clearly was worded in a way to be from her to him.

A please was tacked on the end of some of them.

She really is looking for me. Ebel’s antenna flattened on his head.

These messages were here the whole time, and he had been avoiding them, thinking Ava must hate him now that she had time away to live freely. He’d told himself she needed to forget him, but really, his own fear and self-loathing had kept him away.

As well as one other thing. He clicked his fingers on the keyboard, looking away and then back again to Ava’s photo. My secret. One that he had managed to forget over the cycles, but it kept coming back now in the silence of his newly assigned engine hall. His antennas drooped, remembering.

He’d sent Ava that packet on Cipra, yes, but he didn’t include one important detail. On the day that he bought Ava, so many cycles ago, he had originally only come for one helper. He was only authorized to have one.

Which was a problem, because he paid for two.

He couldn’t help himself. After he picked out Ava to take with him, there was another female that wouldn’t let Ava go. She was holding on to Ava’s legs and giving him the sign of deference over and over. And over. The minders on Cipra were desperate. The Humans were a losing enterprise, and they gave him a deal when he haggled. Two for the price of one.

He had Cipra send the other to a Decata contractor he knew, one whom he trusted to be kind. But he lost contact with them both, long ago. Almost immediately after confirming she was received while Ava was packaged up and sent to him directly at R526 .

Ebel looked at Ava’s picture again, his antennas low as he remembered. Even though he tried to give that other little female a chance, he felt awful. If anything, he felt worse. Because he was so close to helping, and then just . . . didn’t.

How can I tell Ava that I directly lost her sister? His self-loathing came back and his antennas lowered. Then he clicked on the message boards a second time. She is trying so hard to reach me .

Ebel sat there a minute more, looking at the messages Ava had sent him. He could sense her desperation from how many she had sent, noticing the poor grammar in some that she’d tried to word vaguely. I taught her how to write better than that. He scrolled through the screen even as the biologics indicated to him they were hungry, ignoring that sensor for the moment.

But if Ava wants me ... His antennas faced forward, he pulled his pinpad close, and he began to respond.

Ava’s story will continue ... in a few cycles.