Page 18 of Adrift! (Cosmic Connections Cruise #2)

The ache in those ice-shine eyes had gutted her. If she didn’t hold herself together, everything she felt would gush out over her fuzzy orange socks, nastier than fermented mold in a shattered glass.

Huddled into one of the corridor alcoves where passengers had searched for romantic game tokens not so long ago, Remy pressed her knuckles to her own eyes, as if she could block the tears.

In that empty coffee shop a million years ago, she’d sung out her soul.

And now she couldn’t even tell Ikaryo she’d love if he played with her?

That she wasn’t sure she could do it without him.

Did some part of her want to fail again? Did she believe Evens was right to mark her a zero in the IDA book of matches? But how could she do this again when every other time had burned her even if no one else could see the scars?

Except…this wasn’t like the other times, a voice whispered.

This time she didn’t have to be alone.

Remy ducked her face into the deck jacket Ikaryo had given her. She’d skipped breakfast, too caught up in her own head even for coffee. And maybe she’d been feeling a little shy about facing him in public. Would they kiss or…?

Instead, she told herself she needed to work out a save-our-ship set. She looked at some fabricator options for a guitar while she had some tea, tried a few scales, hated the sound, so rough and out of tune…

Spiraling from there was as inevitable as the sun setting.

When she’d gone to the all-hands as summoned, she hadn’t realized how the ship had changed since launch. So much colder, the lights barely enough for Earther eyes.

She hadn’t noticed because being with Ikaryo made everything all right.

She took a shaky breath, scented of him—something metallic and shining, like rain. The coat had been so warm from his body when he wrapped it around her. The gleam in his half-moon eyes when he looked at her bright enough it dazzled her.

If she didn’t save him and the ship and the essential element of love itself…

Well, there was spiraling, and then there was crashing and burning so horrendously no one would ever find all the pieces.

Or maybe Ikaryo would be there, constantly creating anew: strange cocktails, an improvised purification contraption, pieces of himself. All of it beautiful.

Without conscious intention, she found herself in the atmo-hall. It had been thoroughly cleaned, although the big tube where Ikaryo had funneled the cinder seeds remained; in case of a reprise, she presumed.

The half-alien roses had blown wide, past their peak. Remy turned a slow circle. Everything was fading, maybe from the unavoidable cutbacks in life support, or maybe the garden glory had been timed for their three-sunset tour.

Only thorns left.

No, that wasn’t true.

There were buds, still small and tightly sealed, waiting for the next touch of light. But if anything was to come of them, that too was on her.

So was she going to hide in a hole in the wall, or haunt a dying garden in this pale princess dress that clashed with her hair?

At least she needed some whimsical boots.

+ + +

The corridor to the Starlit Salon felt longer than it should, each step carrying the memories of hopes dashed, with a chaser of cigarette smoke, stale beer, and shame. But she focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

Luckily, there were adorable knit flowers on her toes.

The thud of her boot heels on the decking syncopated with her rushing heart, but the drumming couldn’t drown out the sounds from ahead: chatter, laughter, clinking glasses, Felicity’s voice cutting through with the easy cheer of a hostess in her living room at the holidays.

No smoke, only synthequer, and Remy was done with the past.

She paused in the doorway.

The ballroom had been transformed. Most people were milling around, drinks in hand, but someone—probably little green Griiek with her four efficient arms—had arranged the couches in a loose semicircle facing a small cleared space.

Votive lights flickered everywhere, their glow softened by loosely woven drapery Mariah must have contributed.

Thick yarn of every color had been knitted into expansive waves draped from the ceiling, like the softest surf crashing back upon itself, to create an intimate cocoon within the larger room.

It looked very different from the empty coffee shop and the dive bars and hotel lounges and the other places she’d played. Also, it was in space. But her problem had never been the place; it had been her.

And lightyears away, here she was again.

As if hearing the wry thought, Felicity called, “Remy!”

The crowd swiveled to face her, and the collective movement of bodies within fabric, the little shifting breaths, combined into a single soft sibilance, almost a hiss.

She smiled, but her gaze was already rising past them.

Behind his bar like always was Ikaryo.

He was polishing a glass that already gleamed, his augmented fingers moving in slow, precise circles that made her twitch. When their gazes clashed, he went very still. Then he set down the glass and the cloth—the purple bar rag—his empty hands settling on the bar top.

Waiting. Not approaching. Respecting the boundary of old fears she’d thrown up between them.

His return smile was small and sweet and not even an expression on his lost homeworld—she’d looked it up—and all for her.

At that glance and smile—the wordless belief that she could do this and he’d be right there—her throat tightened, her diaphragm fluttered, and her mascaraed eyes welled up with tears.

Which really was a terrible way to start a recital.

“Remy!” Mariah bustled over. “This is so exciting. You’ll never believe this, but…

I’m a big fan! I was telling the others”—she hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the wide-eyed group behind her—“I have all three of your albums. I just didn’t recognize you with your new look and the different name.

” Reaching out to give Remy’s hand an excited little jostle, she laughed. “Quantum entanglement strikes again!”

“That’s amazing,” Remy said, jostling back. And she meant it.

Mariah scowled, the expression ill-fitting on her merry face. “After the last album—which I loved the most—I found out the label owned your name along with the songs. I hoped you’d moved on, but I never would’ve guessed just how far. And now I get to see you all the way out here!”

“Those were hard times, but they’re over,” Remy said. “I’m really happy to play tonight.”

And with luck, none of these people would ever discover how close they were to much harder times.

Walking away from her contract back then had seemed like the end. Joke was on her.

Felicity hustled up beside them, her button shining that determined gold. “I got your specs. Chief and Griiek did the best they could with the main fabricator, but…” She guided Remy through the crowd toward the small stage where an instrument waited on a stand.

It was like a guitar. Remy had sent suggestions from the ship’s existing library, but since they were lost in the Zarnax Zone and facing imminent demise, there wasn’t time for cross-referencing and refinement.

The shape was faithful: curved body, slightly tapering neck, six strings stretched over frets, and a sound hole she guessed was exactly round.

But it was all wrong.

The wood had no grain. The strings gleamed like they’d never been touched, the frets too pristine.

When she lifted it, it flew up; too light, the substance of it off by just enough.

But when she settled the Big Sky-branded strap over her shoulder, the instrument sat against her chest like a deadweight.

“Okay?” Felicity whispered.

“Great.” Remy clinched the strings to stop them from vibrating with the lie.

What else could she say? Her fingers ached for her old guitar, the one she’d left behind on Earth with the delicate crackle in the veneer that flashed under the stage lights, half held together by the stickers plastered across the back from every venue she’d ever played and the musicians she’d opened for—a talisman of her dreams.

That too was the past.

Felicity squeezed her elbow, then went to stand behind Nehivar, who’d claimed a chair slightly apart, as if ready to leap into action if needed.

Because this wasn’t just a sleepaway camp talent show, as Mariah had called it. This was a deadly serious mission.

Remy stood alone in the makeshift spotlight, intensely aware of the captain’s guarded gold gaze and every other eye on her. As hard as it was, she let the silence breathe a moment.

Despite the intervening lightyears, she’d been here before. Just her and an instrument and an audience waiting to be moved.

She watched her fingertips find the first chord, a part of her distantly surprised at the unerring aim. But the alloy strings were sharp; as long as it’d taken to build her calluses, she’d lost them so fast.

The intro tumbled out, in tune but somehow hollow. She angled her grip, repeating the intro with a rougher riff to feign emotion. Still…somehow dull. Like the notes had to force themselves through subspace and bulkheads to reach her.

It was a song she’d written years ago, back when she’d still believed in the words. Alone in the dying garden, she’d tried to remember all the lyrics, heartfelt rhyming couplets about stars and searching and not being alone in the night.

The irony wasn’t lost on her. She’d known it wasn’t the song she needed in this time and place, but how was she supposed to perfect something new?

Even as she took a deep breath for the first verse, she felt the wrongness intensifying. The counterfeit guitar, the stale stanzas on the tip of her lying tongue, the performance for an audience only here because they were trapped, kept in the dark about their looming fate—

This was worse than the coffee shop.

On the edges of her vision, faint rainbow fractals beginning to shimmer. The resonark, responding. But so weakly, as disbelieving as she was.

Letting the breath out, she skipped to the pre-chorus as an instrumental only. Mariah had her eyes closed, swaying slightly, and Felicity gave a stealthy thumbs-up under her elbow, but most of the passengers looked faintly confused. They all knew how a song was supposed to go. And this wasn’t it.

Remy couldn’t even look toward the bar.

She was failing. Again.

Still without a word, she broke into the chorus at a reckless tempo, far too quick for her rusty strumming, fingertips burning. She was going to lose it…

Contorting her hand, she improvised an arpeggio over the lyrics she’d never sing again—“And when all the stars go finally dark, I’ll finally hold your restless heart.”

But the intonation slipped, and as she missed a note recovering, her one true fan Mariah opened her eyes at the mistake.

For an instant, inhuman hues sparkled there. Then she blinked and the kaleidoscopic was gone.

It was all fading. With brutal focus, Remy raged to the bridge, the part of the song where a key change and the beat of her hand against the resounding body would mark a transformation…

And she stopped.

Just stopped on a vicious jangle of dissonance.

The echo in the guitar’s hollow faded away eerily, the diminuendo a niente—the diminish to nothing—breaking into discordant fractals like the resonark’s splintering light. And the silence that followed was absolute.

Past the lacy curtains, Remy locked eyes with Ikaryo. At some point while she’d played, he’d come out from behind the bar and stood poised at its edge. Where he gripped the polished surface, the cybernetic components of his hand were dark, dormant.

Waiting for her.

“I am not out here alone,” she said.

Her voice wasn’t loud, but in the hushed salon, it rang.

Ikaryo’s silver eyes spun once, fast. An unvoiced question.

Ducking out from the strap, she let the instrument slide back to its stand. Hands empty, she took another breath, filling her belly until she felt the note rising to her tongue, acapella.

The unconscious melody she’d been humming right before he’d saved her from falling off one of these very couches.

Not pure, not perfect, and no words—not yet—just the raw beauty of breath and sound, a resonance matched across the ballroom when Ikaryo’s cybernetics bloomed with energy, casting through the thick filigree to reach for her with fingers of light and overtones that seemed to resonate into other dimensions.

An exclamation of wonder swept the crowd, again moving as one to face him.

Remy almost lost hold of her vibrato on a giggle at his startled expression. But he recovered like a pro, even raising his arm to change the rays of light. His pitch deepened too, and she wove a descant around him as he nudged the curtain aside to pace slowly toward her.

Oh, he was a natural, that graceful charm serving him well—and her, of course.

She moved to one side of the little stage, giving him room to step up, and grabbed the odd alien instrument again, never letting the wordless melody falter, while his harmonies echoing, sustaining, and resolving in a dance of light and sound.

When she straightened, he was right there, close enough that sparks from his augments jumped between them. He reached out to brush free her hair caught under the guitar strap.

She’d taken out the morning braid, and a wavy red lock coiled softly around his finger. He lifted the strands to his lips, and out in the audience, someone—maybe Mariah?—cheered.

Since he was accompanying her with his augments, not his mouth, his whisper didn’t interrupt the song, although it nearly broke her:

“Across any distance, Remy, I will hear you. Always.”

It took the muscle memory of every performance where she’d fought tenaciously to the final outro not to kiss him. Instead, she channeled that desire and joy into the flawed instrument, focusing all her heart on the song weaving between them.

Judging by the cheer and the electric thrill across her skin, she knew the audience must feel it as she did: searching and finding, like falling and being caught, the distance between almost and always finally collapsing into now.

The crowd wasn’t quite singing along, but lips were pursed with humming, throats vibrating. Some just swayed. But all were caught in the moment and the music.

Entangled…

Opalescent fire burst above the little stage in alien pyrotechnics. Remy choked out a rare “fuck” as fractals spun out of the explosion with a deep, sonic thrum she felt in the marrow of her bones.

The resonark had escaped.