“Max hurts.” James said with an unhappy burp.
“Enemy hurt more,” Max replied. He wished he had the vocabulary to comfort James or explain the situation, but he didn't. They reached a ventilation shaft, and Max climbed up to grab the edge and pop it open. As he was scrambling into the narrow space, he hit his arm on the edge of the opening.
“God damn mother fucking son of a mother-fucking bitch!” The pain nearly made him fall back out, but he gripped the cover with one hand and the edge of the latching mechanism with the other. After a couple of breaths, he pulled himself up into the shaft and started climbing to the nearest horizontal shaft.
“That is why you do not use unfamiliar weapons,” Max whispered as he crawled. He didn't think that he could pull that trick off again, not when climbing required him to brace himself with his arms.
With every enemy he took out, he took more damage to himself. If these aliens had reinforcements on a ship nearby, he was so very screwed. Max wasn't some bad-ass Ranger. He wasn't even a Marine. He was a fucking zoomie. He wasn't supposed to be the one engaging in hand-to-hand combat with alien invaders.
“Max hurts,” James said again, this time without any additional burps.
“Max hurts,” he agreed. There just wasn't anything he could do about it. He needed to make a pit stop to get James wet, and he needed to kill the rest of the invaders before his injuries could slow him down too much. “Where is the next console? We need to check for enemy.” The idea of having to fight again made Max teeter between feeling homicidal and despairing.
James pointed up with a free tentacle, and Max wanted to groan. He had to climb again. Never one to postpone the inevitable, especially when postponement would give the injured tissue more time to swell and cause more pain, Max started climbing.
A quick check on the computer revealed that the next two aliens were still near the empty storage hold. If Max could get them both to stand in front of the doors and open them, he could shoot them from the far side of the hold, but he didn’t know the weapon’s accuracy. Worse, if he missed, he would have precious few options for cover in that area of the ship.
James touched one end of the hall. “I take weapon here.”
For a second, his horror was so intense that Max couldn’t find words. He wanted to scream and rail, but he knew how the children reacted to any suggestion that they needed help, particularly James. He was the most contrary, self-reliant, stubborn little octopus in creation. “I don’t want you to kill.”
“Query. Reason.” James sounded offended. Maybe Max was projecting because the translator’s voices didn’t seem to convey tone.
“You are young. I don’t want the young to kill.” Max wished he could explain better because the end of James’s tentacles were curling in frustration. Xander had done that a lot when he’d been too young to follow his brothers around the pool.
“I am cognitively mature.”
“You are young and you have not had many experiences. You should not have to remember killing.”
“You killed.”
The words were so simple, but Max felt them like a fist. He had killed. He’d shot down an enemy plane back when he’d been stationed in the Middle East for a few months, and now he’d used his hand-to-hand training to take the lives of three aliens who had as much right to live as any other sentient creature. Max didn’t regret his actions, but he regretted that he’d been forced to take them. He knew that fine line would cost him a lot of sleep in the near future.
“I have more experiences with life, with protecting life and loving people. That makes the pain a little less.”
“Pain? Query. Physical pain?”
Right now Max was in physical pain and relying on adrenaline to control the worst of it, so he didn’t have time for this conversation, but James would do something stupid if Max couldn’t convince him to stay out of the fight. “No. Pain in the soul, in the emotions. All life has value, and ending a life means ending that value.”
“Clarify. They would kill you.” Maybe James assumed Max was too stupid to understand that.
“Yes. That is why I kill them. I will not allow them to kill either of us. But I don’t want you to kill. You need time to learn to value life before taking it.”
James tightened his leg tentacle around Max’s neck before loosening it again. Maybe he understood. Max decided to push his luck. If he had to take a big risk, he wanted James safe. Max pointed to the map. “Stay here. Wait.”
Max knew he was in trouble the minute James’s tentacles curled. “No. I go with Max. Max not alone.”
“I move faster alone. I don't have to worry about hitting you or you holding too tight,” Max explained.
“I hold loosely. I go with Max.” Despite his words, he tightened his leg tentacle.
“I move more quickly if I'm not worrying about you. I need you safe. Wait here.” Max touched a guest room on the opposite side of the ship from the storage space where the two remaining aliens were standing guard. It wasn't the best solution in the world since Max still didn't know how the aliens had gotten onto the ship or whether they had reinforcements ready to board. He was flying in the dark, and unlike when he literally flew in the dark with his fighter jet, he didn't have any instruments or an onboard computer feeding him the data he needed to avoid slamming into the side of a mountain.
“No.”
Max closed his eyes. His best shot at killing quickly and without risking any more physical damage to himself required a frontal assault. If he threw small chunks of broken decking into the storage room, maybe even threw it hard enough to hit the door, they would open the door. After all, these invaders had an issue with their curiosity outstripping their tactical good sense.
If Max waited three or four minutes to give the guards time to get into the storage area, he could then open his door and attack. It wasn't a surefire plan, but it was better than his plan for taking out the previous two aliens had been.
James’s stubborn streak showed up. “I go with.”
“I fight better alone.” Guilt gnawed on Max when James’s tentacles turned into little curly fries that reminded Max of how upset Rick had been when they thought they might lose Xander.
“I want you safe. I protect you. I can't put you in danger.”
“I am cognitively mature.”
“I wouldn’t care if you were at the end of your lifespan. I would still want to protect you.”
James hesitated before asking, “Query. Reason.”
Max could've offered any number of explanations. He was trained to defend civilians. He had a bias toward protecting the young. It was a rather unreasonable bias in this part of the universe, but he wasn't ready to let go of his human tendency to shield younger members of sentient races.
But in the end, there was only one reason that mattered. He tangled his fingers with James’s tentacles. Xander had always loved the gesture, but James and Kohei were so full of energy that they rarely sat still long enough to embrace Max's hand. But this time James reached out with as many tentacles as he could fit around Max's fingers.
“I gave birth to you. You grew in my body. That makes me your father. It makes me responsible for seeing that you are safe and happy. I will kill every bastard on this ship before I will let them touch you. But I can't do something that puts you in danger. I need you safe.”