Small Acts of Intergalactic Rebellion: Birch Hearts

By Elva Birch

A love that breaks all the rules

 

Junior Technician Tanadara knows she isn't supposed to feed destructive pest animals and tame them to obey her whispered commands. She also isn't supposed to have a crush on her gorgeous alien supervisor, Samath…and he's not supposed to be telepathic. What starts as a tentative truce soon blooms into something deeper and more dangerous.

 

When her furry friends are scheduled for extermination, does Tanadara have any chance of saving them…or protecting her own heart?

 

Small Acts of Intergalactic Rebellion is a sizzling short novel, funny and full of feeling, with interspecies love and adorable pets. It is part of Birch Hearts, a collection of unconnected shorts and novellas by Elva Birch, each of them full of romance, adventure, and magic. Shifters, witches, spaceships, and swords...these stories aren't always straight, but they are always straight-up fun, with a satisfying conclusion in a bite-sized book. Small Acts of Intergalactic Rebellion was previously published in the limited edition Pets in Space 8.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elva Birch
• Release date: Apr 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224408573

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

"Hello," Tanadara whispered.

There were eyes peering at her from behind the vent duct cover, unblinking and bright.

It was dim in the service corridor, because unnecessary light was wasteful of resources, and it took Tanadara’s vision a moment to adjust. The next thing she noticed were whiskers, shimmering in what light there was.

The eyes blinked.

Don’t be afraid of me, Tanadara thought, as hard as she could. It was nice to have another creature in the corridor with her, and it was refreshing to find it staring directly at her, instead of slightly to the side as was polite.

Working in the service corridors was solitary duty. The other aliens on Glory station disliked the small spaces and inconsistent gravity, but Tanadara didn’t mind them, or protest her frequent assignments here. Sometimes, it felt like the loneliness here was a little less than it was in social settings, where everyone ignored each other out of courtesy, or made light, careful conversation out of duty.

"Hello," she whispered again.

The creature poked a nose out, twitching curiously, and followed it with a slim, furry body about the length of her hand with the fingers outstretched. It had little triangular ears and eight feet that could find purchase even on the featureless access panels. A long tail behind it ended in a tufted tip.

There had been stray cats in the human refuge where Tanadara grew up, and she recognized the same shy but inquisitive motions that suggested it was dying to greet her but also afraid. She sat where she was, her work bag open beside her, and let it scurry around the walls and stare at her from every direction, giving quiet little chirps and growls.

Tanadara knew what it was from her training. It was a paxoly, classified by the Oversight as a Level 1 pest, and procedure would require her to report it immediately. They leached valuable power from energy systems and chewed up wiring. They were notoriously hard to root out because they had electrical shielding that kept sensors from picking them up.

Tanadara had never seen one before, and she hadn’t realized they would be so cute. The training manual had shown their sharp bared teeth, but hadn’t captured the way their ears flickered, or the graceful all-body wiggle that almost looked like a dance. The paxoly paused, defied gravity, and lifted the front half of its body to fold its front legs like it was regarding Tanadara thoughtfully.

She had to giggle at its too-serious posture, and its tail flicked up and spread like a fan behind it. It chortled in reply, then lowered its head and tail, and slipped fluidly down the wall to approach Tanadara’s work bag.

Tanadara held her breath, not wanting to frighten it away with any noise. Don’t be afraid, she wished with all her heart.

There was an open package of Fazian chips there, and after a few false starts, the paxoly got close enough to snatch one out, then it turned and vanished back into the vent with its prize.

Tanadara finished her work feeling triumphant, like she’d accomplished something great simply by not scaring it immediately off. Then she remembered that she needed to report the paxoly and that it would be exterminated.

But it was so darling and brave, Tanadara thought, and surely just one of them wouldn’t cause that much damage.

She was back in her bunkroom looking up more details on the paxolii when her sister called.

Tanadara took the holocall with a conflicted sense of duty, wishing she had an excuse to ignore it.

Tanadara! Dear sister! Have you been staying on suggested rations? You look plump.

Tanadara immediately vowed to double her rations. Once, she would have taken her sister’s teasing in the light-hearted manner it was meant, but Dailini’s attitude no longer had any real warmth to it. Tanadara didn’t think she meant to be cruel, exactly, but the sister who had once been her best friend didn’t seem to care how cutting her words might be anymore.

It’s nice to see you, she lied. How’s the family?

Dailini caught her up on all the family news, prattling easily from topic to topic until Tanadara could politely excuse herself. She knew that Dailini was only calling out of courtesy, because it was a thing one did for family, not because it mattered to her what Tanadara was doing.

It wasn’t like Tanadara was doing anything worth telling her about anyway…besides finding an illicit pest animal that she ought to report and hadn’t. Tanadara didn’t volunteer that information.

The following day cycle, Tanadara was delighted to see more work assigned in the same corridor, and even more delighted by the return of the creature she had named Whiskers in her head.

"Hello!" she whispered.

It was probably assigning it too much intelligence to think its answering chatter was conversational.

Tanadara offered it a Fazian chip directly from her hand and was delighted when Whiskers was bold enough to come all the way across the floor to take it.

A cycle later, Whiskers was comfortable enough to eat it in front of her, instead of stealing immediately away into the vents. Tanadara was even able to do some of her work without frightening it off. Her efficiency rating on this job might be poor because she was moving so carefully, but her record was good enough to absorb a little slowness.

The data the station computers had on paxolii was limited. They were smart but sub-sentient, resistant to poisons, their shielding made them hard to exterminate, and they were destructive. The directive was to report and exterminate, but Tanadara could not bring herself to betray the little trust that she’d earned. When Whiskers came close enough to let her touch his gray fur and stroke down to his soft tail tip, she felt like she’d accomplished something amazing. She justified her disobedience to the Oversight by arguing that there was only one of them, and how much energy could one paxoly steal?

But three cycles later, in another corridor altogether, there were two of them. The newcomer had a white blaze on its steel-gray head, and Tanadara named it Chitters for its greeting before she remembered that it was unwise to get attached. The two of them together were even braver than Whiskers alone, and after a few Fazian chips, they were happily climbing on her modesty garment and twining around her wrists, purring.

Tanadara had never been so happy, and the appearance of two more the next cycle didn’t dampen her delight. She named them Shimmies, for its distinctive rear-leg wiggle, and Shivers, for its frequent tremble. Shivers’ dextrous little claws were all white.

She got to the point where she could work without scaring them away, and they rode on her shoulders and played in her hair