James tightened his tentacles around Max's hand. “Max goes into more danger.”
James wasn't stupid, and Max wasn't going to lie to him. “Yes. I'm going to try to get these two guards to enter the storage area, then I'm going to open this door and fire on them.” Max touched the screen to show where he planned on carrying out his attack.
The access passage he would need to use was a vertical shaft with no intersections anywhere close to that deck. If Max had to flee, if the aliens got to that door fast enough, Max would have nowhere to hide. That access shaft was so long that Max had never found the bottom before abandoning his explorations.
“Danger,” James said with a little burping noise added at the end.
Maybe it was some sad and lonely piece of his psychology needing to feel loved, but Max imagined that James was distraught. “Yes. That's why you need to stay here.”
James pulled his tentacles away from the screen. He tightened his hold on Max's hand before he spoke. “Conditional. If Max is hurt, invaders come for me and brothers and other father.”
Bands of fear tightened around Max's chest so much so that he couldn't speak, but he did nod.
James touched the corridor door next to the one where the invaders were guarding. “I need me here. I wait for Max. Conditional. Max fails. I protect. I am cognitively mature.”
Max closed his eyes and swallowed. He didn't want to think of James having to pull the trigger. James was his hyperactive little boy, his explorer. He wanted James to grow up and chase skirts and, like his namesake, find peaceful solutions.
However, Max couldn't deny the real danger that he might fail. If that happened, he couldn't leave the rest with no defense at all. Max had seen how fast the children absorbed new ideas, and unfortunately, James had seen him fight. Of everyone on the ship, James was probably best positioned to defend the family.
Max hated it.
Max curled his arm around James's body and leaned in, so that he could rest his forehead against a section of James's oversized head. He was surprised when James allowed the touch. Of the three children, he had always been the least tactile and affectionate. After a second, James pushed him away.
Max tugged on James’s leg tentacle, urging him to uncurl it. “You have to protect yourself. Don't let them hurt you,” Max said. He pulled on the hand he had intertwined with James’s tentacles and drew the second weapon. When he handed it to James, James curled several tentacles around it. “Don't fire if you're too close to them.”
“I watch. I learn.”
Max nodded and then put James down on the floor. They were close enough to the storage room that James would be able to get himself there. But Max was going to have to do some climbing to reach the access point to the shaft he needed. “Be careful,” he told his little explorer.
James made a soft whale sound and then said, “Don't be dead.”
That was the best advice Max had ever received.
Chapter Eighteen
Five dead with one alien left was the thought running through Max’s head as he stood outside the door to Rick’s control center office. Now that he’d killed the two aliens on the lower level, the computer console showed one bad guy left, and he was standing right next to Rick.
Max hissed and pressed his hand to his right side. He was fairly sure he had pulled a muscle climbing the ladder back out of the service shaft after he’d killed the last two aliens. Much more of this and he was going to be ready for a hospital bed. Hell, he needed one now, but he couldn’t afford to reveal the extent of his injuries. James was around the corner, ready to take the fight to the alien leader. That would happen over Max’s dead body.
Max raised his weapon before nodding. Around the corner, James opened the door controls he had hacked. Max rushed the room, identifying the enemy. He was too close to Rick, so Max fired. If the asshole took refuge behind Rick, the situation could spin out of control too damn fast.
The invader had been moving toward Rick, but the energy blast shot between him and Rick, and the alien leader leaped backward.
“Max!” Rick shouted. Hopefully none of the blast had hit him, but Max didn’t have time to worry about Rick. He kept his weapon focused on the enemy leader while staying far enough back to keep clear of those powerful leg tentacles. Max’s stomach still ached from the kick he’d taken from the first asshole he’d killed. The invader stood against the computer console with his short tentacles all pulled up under his body.
“Take your weapon and put it on the floor,” Max said. “Carefully. If I even suspect you are trying to use it, I will splatter your guts across the wall.”
The invader tilted his pyramid body and looked at Max with those huge eyes. “Query. Confused.”
Max took a deep breath. He was running out of energy, but he needed to secure the scene and get information about any potential reinforcements before he crashed. His arms throbbed and his head hurt and black dots swarmed in his vision. “Gun. Floor. Now.”
That must have translated because the invader took his weapon out and bent all four of his leg tentacles so he could place his weapon on the floor.
Max tapped the floor with his foot. “Gun. Here. Now.”
The invader pushed the weapon with his small tentacles and then stood. “No harm,” the invader said. Max wasn’t sure if that was a request for mercy or some claim that he hadn’t harmed the family. Considering that his men had tried to take an action that would have killed Xander and Kohei, Max didn’t feel charitable either way.
“Rick, are you all right?” Max asked, but he kept his gaze on the enemy.
“Yes. I am healthy. There’s danger. Other aliens are out there.”
“How many?” Max asked. A chorus of whale song blasted the air as James hurried into the room.
James sang at his father for a couple of minutes, and Rick hurried to the computer panel. His tentacles flew across the controls faster than Max could watch, even if he tried. However, Max had more pressing concerns, like not passing out when he was holding a prisoner at gunpoint.
“Max, other aliens are not on sensors. Possibility. They left,” Rick said.
James sang to his father again, and this time the computer translated enough words for Max to understand that James was giving him a detailed description of events from the time Max had come to get James in the pool room. Max still hated that he had seen aliens two and three die, but at least he had been around the corner when Max had splattered the guts of aliens four and five all over the storage hold and corridor. At some point they were going to have to get down there and clean up a sizable mess blocking the main doors.
Max asked, “Are there more invaders coming?”
Instead of answering, Rick asked, “Query. Method killing first. He weapon. Max no weapon.” Rick’s words were choppier than they had been in months.
Once Rick got a question in his head, he tended to focus on it to the point of obsession, so Max answered, “Maintenance hook into internal organs.”
The alien commander’s eyes grew larger. Good. Maybe the asshole would reconsider his life choices before attacking anyone else’s ships and threatening their offspring.
“Rick, I need to know if more of his people are going to rush in here. Where is their ship? James couldn’t access external sensors.”