Page 17 of Adrift! (Cosmic Connections Cruise #2)

Ikaryo roused at an insistent chime from his datpad, abandoned on the bedside table.

Remy’s bed.

He rolled over to silence it, and when he shifted back, she was awake, green eyes still hazed with sleep. But sharpening fast.

“What now?” Her voice was husky and disgruntled.

Did she mean what had triggered the wakeup…or where they would go from here?

Maybe being adrift wasn’t all bad if it meant he didn’t have to answer that second part.

“Good morning.” He leaned over to kiss her, slow and sweet, to show her whatever else was happening, she mattered too.

And he would happily begin his mornings—even the possibly disastrous ones, or maybe especially those—with a cantankerous beauty who felt like home…

Even as the implications of that thought seized him, she was yielding beneath his lips, one hand rising to curl behind his nape.

“Very good morning,” he murmured when he finally lifted his head.

“Mm.” She stretched, her hips nudging his. “I didn’t believe the space docs when they said the IDA vaccinations cured morning breath permanently.”

“Who would lie about something like that?” He kissed her again—a little quicker this time since the chime had been insistent. “Captain called an all-hands. I have to go.”

Rolling off the side of the bed, he padded over to the couch where his uniform had slipped to the floor. When he was leaning down, a breathy whistle of appreciation made him glance over his shoulder.

Remy tilted her head to blink at him slyly through her lashes. “Sorry. That just slipped out. Lack of sleep, ya know?”

He postured a little under the lusty regard and left the front seal of his uniform mostly undone. “Too sleepy for a private breakfast?”

When she sat up, the blanket sagged just enough for him to ogle a bit too. “Coffee?” But even as she said it, she was shaking her head, tangled red hair tumbling around her bare shoulders. “You need to answer that alarm. I’ll do breakfast in the salon with the others.”

Just days ago, she’d been so reluctant to join in, and tonight she’d perform for them despite her avowal that she’d left her music back on Earth.

Returning to the bedside, he smoothed one hand over her hair and leaned down again, for a deeper kiss this time. “I’ll see you there,” he murmured against her lips.

She clung to him, just for a heartbeat. “Okay.”

Was she? He glanced back again before he left, and she was still in the bed, her gaze angled toward the black viewport.

She must’ve felt his regard because she pivoted to face him. “I hear your gears grinding. Quit it.” Her smile was about as real as his synthequers. “I’m not going anywhere else.”

Because she was choosing to stay? Or because they were stuck?

The question haunted him as he hurried to the Starlit Salon where Chef and Griiek had already set up the breakfast buffet.

They waved off his apologies for being late—although Chef waggled their phonoplasts suggestively—and then Felicity arrived with the draft of an announcement for the evening’s “entertainment”.

He looked it over. “I think the entertainment should probably have a say.”

Felicity nodded. “She should be at the all-hands too.” She glanced up at him when he didn’t respond. “There is a risk for everyone on this ship, and maybe farther than that,” she reminded him. “We’re all in this together, including Remy.”

“I just want her to be…” Jaw tensed, he couldn’t continue.

Felicity touched the back of his hand, her voice low when she said, “Ellix is the same way.”

Knowing the big Kufzasin fretted about his Earther lover didn’t reassure Ikaryo that his feelings were reasonable. Because if the ship’s captain had doubts they’d make it—

But the rest of the Cosmic Connections Cruise passengers were already streaming in, looking for coffee and pastries.

Evens wasn’t among them, for which Ikaryo was grateful.

How was he supposed to provide “cosmically superior customer service” to someone who’d put them all in this danger?

But a secret part of him was thankful for that moment back in port—call it luck or fate or a collapsing wave of probability in a quantum mathematical function—when he’d noticed the “crew opening: three-sunset cruise” recommendation among his messages.

Because every muddled moment of this improbable chaos cocktail since had somehow distilled down to Remy.

+ + +

The all-hands was held in the command module; not a place frequented by the ship’s bartender. With no passengers to reassure and comfort, environmentals had been reduced to stark essentials: the air was colder and still, lumens provided only by the necessary readouts. It felt…

One step away from haunted.

The captain was already there, of course, with Evens. Both looked strained. As the crew arrived, Felicity entered with Remy, and the two Earther women stood together near a hologram of the capacitorus displayed on the main engineering console.

Ikaryo shifted, wanting to go to them, but the captain cleared his throat.

“We already know where we stand,” he said in his deep voice.

“Exactly where we were. Based on what we know now”—he cast a gold glare at Evens—“I made a mistake ordering the anomaly’s containment.

Isolation and suppression won’t save the ship.

” He let out an aggrieved breath. “And it might exacerbate a weakness in the elemental bonds of the universe. Suvan, updates?”

“The coherent waveform of the harmonic resonance…” The chief’s projected profile flickered. “The resonark is unraveling at an accelerating rate even though I’ve adjusted the containment field as a patch. We might be at a dead stop, but we’re rapidly approaching disaster.”

The flicker was a reflection of the capacitorus in the engineer’s pale eyes, Ikaryo realized. A dying light.

“How long?” Evens leaned hard against the console, as if he wanted to be closer to the anomaly.

“If the pattern continues, a few ship’s cycles, at most.”

As the statement hung in the chill, Ikaryo thought about the unsuspecting passengers, how quickly they’d bonded despite being strangers. Which had always been the point of space speed dating. But like this? Like the captain had fallen for Felicity in the midst of a crisis?

Ikaryo ached to cross the tense distance. Just like he and Remy had—

Had what? They’d put no words to the sensual song they’d shared. But this was not the place, and now there was no more time.

Nehivar squared off to the Earther women. “Ms. McCoy. You haven’t changed your mind about tonight’s recital?”

In a simple lavender shift, as if her room’s fabricator had finally run out of bad ideas, Remy looked delicate against the cold dark of the bridge.

But her answer was clear and unwavering. “I’ll be ready.”

“Just a tiny pocket of harmony in the universe, but a seed of hope for us.” Evens’ murmur echoed eerily.

“Music is found in all known Earther cultures, and stitching a song against the silence of the night may have been one of humanity’s oldest ways of celebrating our existence together, even before we had words. ”

Felicity frowned at him. “Anyway. Invitations were posted to the passengers and crew this morning.” She linked her elbow through Remy’s. “Everyone’s coming.”

Lips twisting in that sham smile that had bothered Ikaryo earlier, Remy nodded a stiff acknowledgment. “I suppose it’s the only show in town. No pressure.”

Unable to hold himself back any longer, Ikaryo strode toward her. Luckily, Nehivar had turned to assigning tasks that Felicity was doublechecking against her datpad, so it didn’t count as breaking rank.

And Remy was already halfway out the door.

“Remy. Wait.” Ikaryo caught her arm.

Her bare skin was so cold, it shocked him. Since he’d just been in storage, which was now exceedingly icy, he still had a deck jacket over his uniform. Quickly stripping out of the extra layer, he draped it around her shoulders.

“Oh. Thank you.” The tone was aloof, but she snuggled into the heavy plasilk.

In the angriest aftermath of leaving his planet, he’d sometimes wondered why he hadn’t been completely replaced with synthetic machined components. Now he was grateful for every erg of natural warmth his body had saved in the fabric.

“Do we need to talk…” He wasn’t quite sure what he was asking. “About tonight?”

She blinked at him, and the distance in her green eyes sent a different sort of chill through him. “What do you mean?”

“I thought I…” Why did his universal translator keep failing?

Except he knew the tech wasn’t the problem.

For the suspension between one heartbeat the next, he imagined how this could go: another closed-off place falling away behind him even if they were still adrift.

Sometimes letting go hurt less than holding on. He’d learned that from an Earther rose thorn.

But he was an alien, with fake, unfeeling parts, whose last glimpse of home had vanished in a refugee ship’s afterburn. And that made him uniquely qualified to treasure the prickly heart of a woman who’d mistaken failure for fate and silenced her own song.

He held her wary gaze, the sheen over her eyes reflecting the fading glow of the resonark’s crystal prison. “I’ll take that stage with you, Remy. If you want me. You already know I can’t quite do the melodies yet, but for backup and synthesizer in a pinch, I could be…your man.”

She wanted to say yes. He felt it in the way her body canted just a bare degree toward his, the bitter set of her lips softening just a breath.

But she shook her head. She’d gathered the red locks he’d fisted last night into a tight braid that would prevent tangling, and her unyielding stance screamed without a sound not to touch.

“I need songs I haven’t written and some instrument I’ve never played.” She swallowed hard. “I just…have to focus on that, please. On not failing spectacularly and killing us all.”

“It’s not just you,” he reminded her softly. “It’s us.”

“Ikaryo,” Nehivar called.

Glancing over his shoulder to see Felicity hushing the captain, Ikaryo reached out for Remy at the same time…

But she was already gone, only the flicker of her pale hem disappearing from the bridge.

Felicity hurried up beside him. “I’m so sorry. Kufzasin captains growl first and recognize heart-to-hearts never.” She glanced at the empty doorway. “She’s petrified. And not just of performing.”

Ikaryo groaned. “If she’s petrified, how did she move so fast?”

Felicity gave him a reproving look. “Maybe you were moving too fast?”

He returned her stare. “Said the Earther who moved into the spaceship captain’s quarters.”

“Ooh, got me. But relationships are tricky even when you’re not trying to save the universe.”

“Very helpful. Thank you.”

Though the sound was strained, she chuckled. “As angry as I am at Mr. Evens, I get why he’s obsessed with finding the holy grail of love, so we wouldn’t have these problems anymore.”

His translator was slow to provide context. “Seems like a lot of people die on endless journeys looking for holy grails.”

She lifted one shoulder. “Like I said, it’s a problem.”

He wanted to be done with endless lightyears, with passages etched in his skin that no one saw but him. He’d found a place he might belong.

If she’d let him past the thorns.

As he followed Felicity back to their impatient captain, he passed the projection of the capacitorus. Suvan had added a countdown timer. Yes, very helpful.

Behind the crystalline facets, the resonark’s pattern pulsed a dying rhythm, and Ikaryo didn’t need a button to understand the feeling when it beat in time with his own half-broken heart.