Today we welcome Kyndra Hatch, one of the authors of the newly released Pets in Space® 4 for a guest blog about the pet in her story, Interrupting Starlight. Welcome to Spacefreighters Lounge, Kyndra!
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Meet
Squeak, the playful pet from my Pets in Space® 4 story, “Interrupting Starlight.” He provided food and companionship
to Tessa, who was stranded on the desolate desert Korthan world for two years.
Squeak is
a molk, a burrowing animal that resides in Korthan space with the look and size
of a large hedgehog of Earth. Trumpet ears allow him to hear very well,
especially when hunting.
No one
really knows where molks originated. Found on most worlds in Korthan space,
they are highly adaptable. In hot environments, they have scales with a thin
layer of fur underneath. In cold environments, they shed their scales, the fur
becoming a thick coat that keeps them warm.
Playful
and social, molks make great pets. They are scavengers, but also fierce hunters
with the bonus that anything they scavenge or catch can also be eaten by
humans. As humans explore Korthan worlds to inhabit, they don’t always know
what is edible. A handful of humans have figured out that if a molk eats something,
then they know it’s safe to eat themselves.
Korthans,
on the other hand, consider molks to be vermin and would just as soon eradicate
the species. Molks can burrow through metal and wiring, wreaking havoc on domiciles
and starships alike. They are especially problematic on the starships, as there
have been cases where molks accidentally burrowed through bulkheads, causing
the contents of the ship to vent into space. They also like to collect shiny
objects, which is a problem on a ship full of shiny things. Worse is that they
are undetectable by sensor sweeps and scanners. Even cyborgs and living ships
cannot detect their presence, so it is incumbent upon every Korthan to report a
molk sighting immediately.
The
following snippet features Squeak. Tessa, the heroine of the story, has him
hidden away on the Korthan galaxy-ship that rescued her.
***
Tessa searched the bed covering for her squeaky
companion. Blinking up at her sleepily, his bulbous trumpet ears perked up at
the sight of the container in her hand. That was a good sign.
Opening the container, she barely had time to show
the creature the contents before Squeak was upon the cube, devouring it
ravenously. Okay, so it wasn’t poisonous. One problem, there wasn’t anything
left for her to eat.
“You couldn’t save some for me?” she said.
The little animal looked up at her, emitting several
low-pitched squeaks, head turning sideways, tail sticking up in the air.
Tessa grabbed her bag. At least there was some
spider jerky—
“You ate all the spider jerky too?”
Squeak disappeared under the covers, tuft of
feathers at the end of his tail sticking out, giving away his position,
unbeknownst to him.
Gently grabbing the tuft of feathers as she walked
past the bed, Squeak let out a playful squeal as he turned, the feathers
disappearing under the covers, a fat paw with long claws swiping out, trying to
grab but missing her fingers.
***
Grab your copy of Pets in Space® 4 today! For a limited
time, Pets in Space® 4 brings together today’s leading Science Fiction Romance
authors to help Hero-Dogs.org,
a non-profit charity that helps our service veterans and first responders. https://petsinspaceantho.com
