Page 12 of Adrift! (Cosmic Connections Cruise #2)

“I was just promised a free fun evening with pretty sunsets,” Remy whisper-hissed in Ikaryo’s ear as they tagged along behind the trio out of the salon. The warmth of her breath tingled against his skin.

They hadn’t been expressly commanded to follow, but they hadn’t been prohibited either, and he had to admit: he wanted to be part of this, just as Evens had reminded Remy.

He cast a sidelong glance her way. “That’s all you were promised. But is that all you really wanted?”

When she sucked in her cheeks, brow furrowing, he thought she would again reject the aim of the Cosmic Connections Cruise, awkward though it had become.

But then she exhaled in a slow, deflating whistle. “I don’t know.” Just as he was about to challenge her avoidance, she looked up at him. In the dimmed corridor, her green eyes were shadowed but unwavering. “But I…I’m ready to figure it out.”

Maybe she was just talking about the anomaly, but the hint of a blush his enhanced eyes identified in her freckled cheeks made him wonder if there was more.

But this wasn’t the time to ask. The captain, stalking so fast that Felicity was half-jogging beside him, was apparently even more eager to solve this conundrum.

Despite his cane, Evens kept up, his steps smaller but purposeful, as if the answer to all his questions waited in the engine module where the anomaly had been—so they thought—contained.

As they waited for Nehivar to input access codes, Ikaryo studied their grouped reflection in the polished bulkhead.

The captain, tense with responsibility for passengers he’d never intended to know.

Felicity beside him, her sparkle honed to determination.

Evens, obsessed with mysteries that might be more dangerous than a renegade ship.

And Remy, of course, who’d traveled across the galaxy to escape her music only to find that a breath of idle humming had reignited a monster.

Like the anomaly waiting within, they were all caught. By their dead engines in the Zarnax Zone, by the choices that had set them on this path, by their doubts. He’d told Remy every point on the spacetime continuum was so unlikely as to be impossible. And yet here they were.

Good thing he was a bartender and not an astrophysicist.

The portal finally opened with a puff of chilly air.

Beyond the corridor lighting, the inner curving wall of the bulkhead disappeared into the gloom behind ghostly fingers of fog.

Beside him, Remy moved closer, her shoulder brushing his.

At the glancing touch, some of the tension leached out of him.

Could he hope she felt the same comfort?

Because the eerie, broken glow coming from the center of the room was not reassuring.

The containment unit was a twisting structure of translucent mineral bounded by thick cables snaking into the murk. The faceted surface refracted the tiny lights of a control panel and several sensors set around the torus, while within the crystal cell, faint glimmers pulsed erratically.

“There it is,” Mr. Evens said unnecessarily, his voice carrying a reverence that made Ikaryo’s augments tingle in unease. “The answer to everything we’ve been searching for.”

“If it’s the answer, you better ask your questions,” came a grumbling voice from the shadows. “The energy signature is decaying.”

“Decaying?” Evens stumbled forward to brace a hand on the capacitorus. “What do you mean?”

“Dying,” the chief engineer said bluntly as he edged toward them, avoiding the lights of the control panel.

Felicity put a hand over her feelings button that had gone abruptly gray. “How can it be dying? It’s just energy, right? Energy never goes away.”

Suvan tilted his head, huge pale eyes glinting.

“At the cosmic scale or the quantum one, yes. But separated from the resonant harmonics that match it, this distinct tessellation isolated within this matrix is decohering.” He angled an indignant stare toward the captain. “Which is what you said you wanted.”

“No!” Evens spun around to face them, panic distorting his suave bearing. “We can’t lose it. Not when I’ve just found it.”

Felicity reached out for the captain and leaned into him while the big Kufzasin male gazed down at the smaller Earther. “Our priority needs to be the ship, crew, and passengers,” Nehivar said, not unkindly. “Your research is secondary.”

“But the resonark may be unique in the universe.” Evens sagged. “Or at least vanishingly rare. This chance may never come again.”

“Ellix,” Felicity murmured. “If it is a…a source of love, we can’t let it die.” Her blue eyes were beseeching as her voice dropped to a whisper, and Ikaryo thought only his enhancements would catch the troubled words. “If it brought us together—”

“No.” The captain’s arm closed around her possessively. “I won’t risk losing anyone here.” He squared off to the ship’s owner. “I’m sorry for your missed opportunity,” he said. “And for the resonark, whatever it is. But I’m getting our people home.”

As Evens tried to restate his case, Ikaryo found himself drifting closer to the torus. When the anomaly had first appeared in the Starlit Salon, scintillating between the eclipsing moon and the startled passengers, his enhanced eyes hadn’t registered anything beyond scattering photons.

And then of course the screaming had distracted him.

But something had shifted in his perception since harmonizing with Remy’s voice. A recalibration in his neural interfaces because of the quantum tunneling between his implants and the anomaly?

Or maybe the new way of seeing was simply awareness.

But now, through the honeycombed crystal, the fractals of waning light translated into wavelengths like music that almost made sense.

But the song was fading.

“Ikaryo?” Remy’s voice was even softer than her hand when she reached out to tangle her fingers through his.

Just as he touched the capacitorus with his augmented hand.

The facets beneath his fingertips brightened, and his cybernetic components sparked too. In time with his heartbeat, a feedback loop of rainbow light cycled through him, just as it had in the salon when he’d kissed Remy.

Whatever the resonark really was, it responded.

And despite the intervening barriers, it was reaching out to them.

The realization startled him, and when the surprise zinged across his skin, Remy let out a little noise of shock as the rainbows arced to her.

Her breathy sound hung in the chilly air like a miniature nebula that ignited in the glow of more facets as the captive anomaly reflected their presence.

“It’s beautiful.” Remy’s hold on his hand tightened, and when he looked at her, he saw his own wonder reflected in her green eyes. “And lonely. Do you feel it?”

Echoing the tremble of emotion in her voice, the glow shimmered.

“Yes, Remy,” Evens murmured. “Call to it in your own way.”

Her green eyes widened, pupils expanding to fill with the resonark’s light. She took in a breath, her breasts rising with a singer’s deep capacity.

But the way her fingers spasmed in his…

Ikaryo pulled back from the torus, breaking contact with Remy too. “Stop. We don’t know what will happen if—if we let it make contact.”

She blinked a few times rapidly, the stars fading from her eyes as the resonark fell quiescent again.

“You’re right,” Nehivar said. “The anomaly hijacked the ship when it was loose. I’m not going to let it take control of any of you.”

When Evens made an abbreviated sound of dissent, the captain rounded on him. “You hired me to captain this ship. I’ll make the decisions—unless you’re relieving me of command.”

Still partly in shadow, Suvan growled. “Do that and you’ll be flying the ship yourself too.”

Felicity gave a stiff nod, her jaw set. “Also, you should be prepared to assume all passenger oversight responsibilities, including evening entertainment, safety and sustainability communications, meal planning with Chef, housekeeping with Griiek, and handling complaints, which are entirely understandable considering we are adrift due to—”

Evens thumped his cane on the deck. “All right, enough. Points taken.” His mouth twisted in a reluctant grin. “I chose my crew well. Maybe too well.”

Of all the shipmates he’d had across the lightyears, Ikaryo had never been prouder to stand alongside these.

“Wait.” Shouldering past him, Remy stepped forward. “I want to try.”

They all pivoted to stare at her.

But she avoided their gazes, including his. “How long are we going to be stuck out here? If you had other ideas for saving us, wouldn’t we be back in port by now?” She squared off to Evens. “If you think there’s a chance that music will reach the monster, or whatever, I’ll sing.”

“No,” Ikaryo said, dread sharpening his tone. He’d felt the pulsing strangeness locked in the crystal. It was too risky. “You can’t take the chance.”

Even if it wasn’t dangerous, if they found a way to just turn the ship around, back to what they’d left behind, as if none of this had even happened…

Remy rounded on him, green eyes blazing. “You think I can’t do it?”

He stiffened. He knew how her aspirations had died, and how deeply those wounds had festered, but that hadn’t been what he meant, at all. “Remy—”

“No one is touching the capacitorus,” Nehivar snapped. “Not until—”

The sharp chime of an alarm from every crew datpad in the room drowned him out, followed by a calm, automated voice: “Atmospheric processing variance detected in botanical module. Chief Engineer to atmo-hall immediately.”

Nehivar’s whiskers flattened as he consulted his wrist datpad.

“The garden’s filtration is jammed. Normally we could operate without it until we got back to port, but…

” He slashed one claw toward the containment unit where only a few facets still pulsed.

“With that thing sucking all our power, the problem could cascade into the main atmospheric processors.”