Claimed By The Orc

I'm elbow-deep in the filter housing when the green sludge starts eating through the cuff of my jumpsuit. Not the sleeve. The cuff. Because nothing on Haven-7 breaks right.

"Amara. You there?" Jax's voice crackles through the comm piece in my ear, all static and overworked, same as the rest of the station.

"I'm elbow-deep in algae, Jax. Whatever it is, it can wait."

"No. No, it really can't. Docking bay three. Inbound vessel."

I rip my arm out and let the sludge splatter across the deck plating. It lands in a thick, wet glob that I'm going to have to clean up later, and isn't that just the story of my entire goddamn life? "What kind of inbound vessel?"

A pause. Then: "Orkan Prime."

The words hit me somewhere in the chest. Not like a punch. Like a solid brick to the sternum. I stand there, dripping green, while every horror story I ever heard as a kid lights up in my head at the same time. Orcs. Barbarians. Soulless monsters who rip your heart out just to watch it beat.

"Amara?" Jax's voice drops. "You still there?"

"I'm here." I grab the rag hanging off the filter frame and wipe my hands. The rag is already green. Everything on Haven-7 turns green eventually. That's a joke somebody probably made once and then realized it wasn't actually a joke at all, because here we are.

Green. I hate green. My grandmother used to tell me it was the color of life. "Green, Amara. Green everywhere." She had this crumpled photo of a field full of yellow flowers, and she'd tap the center with one finger and say, "These are daisies. They just grow up out of the dirt because they want to be seen." She said Earth was like an ocean of green, with silver rivers and blue skies that went on forever, a sun that didn't flicker or fail, and I believed it like a religion. I got a daisy tattooed on my wrist the week after she died. A little black-inked reminder that somewhere in this universe, life used to mean more than recycling air and eating synthetic sludge.

Then I look at my arm again, and the synthetic sludge is swinging down toward my elbow, and I want to laugh or scream or both.

This is our green now. Mold and algae and broken promises.

I wipe the daisy too, because it's covered in green crap, and head for the door. We're bottom-feeders. That's what I keep telling myself as I walk. Humanity didn't leave Earth because we were explorers or pioneers or any of that noble nonsense. We got evicted. We ate too much, broke too much, burned too much, and when the sky finally stopped working, we begged our way into the stars and found out real quick that the universe doesn't care about us. It's crowded, hungry, and mean. We're the species nobody wanted. The clever vermin in the vents.

The corridors of Haven-7 don't change. Same scratched metal walls. Same flickering glow panels. Same recycled air that's been through five hundred lungs before mine. Mid-shift means the place is swarming with everyone too unimportant to get a private quarters or a shuttle off-station. I dodge around a maintenance cart, step over a leak that's dripping something blue, and nearly collide with a cluster of kids chasing each other between crates. One of them has a ToyDrann made from scrap metal. It roars at me. I roar back. His friends laugh.

Then the crowd parts, and I see two Vyre gliding toward the transit hub.

They're both tall. Like, insultingly tall. Skin like polished opal, almost translucent at the edges, moving like they're being filmed from four different angles at once. They don't look at me. To the Vyre, humans are furniture. They keep Haven-7 in the sky, so I guess that gives them the right to be bored by our existence. Fine. I'm bored by theirs too.

A Drann nearly flattens me next. It's massive, lizard-skinned, all scales and bad attitude. It grunts and shoves past me without slowing down. I press myself against the wall until it's gone. The Drann handle the mining and the heavy lifting. They're not evil. They're just built like wrecking balls and treat everything that isn't a wall like it's in their way.

And then there are the Orcs.

I've only ever seen one in person. Once. When I was six years old.

He was standing in the main docking hub, waiting for some shipment, seven and a half feet of muscle with skin the color of bruised forest and tusks jutting up past his lip. I remember staring at him. I couldn't help it. His eyes were amber, bright like burning fuel, and the air around him felt thick and hot, like you couldn't get a full breath within ten feet of him.

My mother grabbed my arm so hard that her fingers left bruises. "Don't look, Amara. They're soulless. Barbarians. They'll rip the heart right out of your chest just to see it beat."

Her voice didn't shake. It never shook.

I spent years having nightmares about those amber eyes. I'd lie in my bunk, chest heaving, convinced that something was breathing down my neck, waiting for me to slow down, to mess up, to give it a reason.

I didn't know then that the monster I was scared of wasn't the worst thing waiting for me.

I didn't know that my own blood would be the ones to hand me over.

The docking bay doors are already open when I get there. The clamps are engaging, locking a ship into place. It's dark. All angles and matte-black tungsten, no lights, no windows, no logos, nothing like the polished Vyre vessels or the beaten-up freighters the Drann use. It doesn't look like it was built to travel. It looks like it was built to hit something.

The hatch hisses open.

The first Orc out is a guard. Armored, huge, carrying a weapon that looks like it could punch through the station wall like it was wet paper. Then another. Then a third. They line up on either side of the ramp, scanning the bay, waiting for something.

My heart is doing that thing where it can't decide between speeding up and stopping entirely.

I should leave. There's no reason for me to be here. Jax said inbound vessel, but that doesn't mean I have to stand here and watch the nightmare fuel unload.

But I can't move. I'm rooted to the deck plating, watching, because some part of me is obsessed with the idea that I'm about to see another one of them up close.

And then he steps out.

He's bigger than the rest. Not by a little. By a lot. He moves like gravity itself is scared of him, like he could walk through a bulkhead and the bulkhead would apologize. His skin is that same deep, scarred green, but he's covered in marks, cut lines, patterns I don't recognize. His tusks are longer. His eyes are amber, and when they sweep across the bay, the whole room feels like it's holding its breath.

Then his gaze lands on me.

I stop breathing. He's looking at me. I'm looking at him. I'm standing there in a green-stained jumpsuit with god knows what dried on my sleeve, and I should be terrified. I am terrified. But there's something else underneath it, this weird spark, this itch to say something stupid just to prove I'm not afraid.

He tilts his head, just slightly. Not a threat. Not a greeting. Curious.

My mother's voice is screaming in my head. Don't look. Don't look. Run.

So, of course, I raise one eyebrow and say, "You're blocking the loading zone."

The words come out before I can stop them. Steady. Dry. Absolutely insane. I'm already bracing for death. Like, actual death. That's the energy I'm bringing.

But the prince just stares at me. His jaw tightens. The scarred muscle in his neck moves as he swallows.

Then he walks past me.

His shoulder brushes mine, hard enough to spin me half around. I catch myself on a cargo crate and I should be grateful, should be relieved, should be reevaluating every choice that led me here.

Instead, I turn around and call after his back, "You're welcome for the hospitality!"

He doesn't stop. But I see it. A muscle in his jaw jumps, like he's holding something back. A laugh. A growl. I can't tell.

Then he's gone, swallowed by the station, and I'm left standing in the echoing bay with a crew of Orc guards watching me and a ship behind me that looks like a weapon.

I need to leave. I need to go back to hydroponics and finish my shift and never think about him again.

Instead, I touch the daisy tattoo on my wrist. It's still wet with filter sludge. I take a breath, push my shoulders back, and walk toward cargo dispatch.

That's the thing about being a bottom-feeder. You don't get to walk away from trouble. You walk toward it, because trouble is where the work is, and work is the only thing that keeps you alive.