Page 19 of Adrift! (Cosmic Connections Cruise #2)

Fractured spirals of backlit shadow blazed across Ikaryo’s enhanced vision. Before singing with Remy, he’d been unable to perceive the resonark with his augments.

Now he saw how the attenuating filaments of energy sought connection, endlessly reaching…

This had been the risk.

The fractals of dark rainbow hung suspended above the crowd. Someone screamed, and almost everyone cringed away, except the captain who surged around Felicity with a stomp of his boots. Evens was right behind him, his wondering face angled upward to the resonark.

“Keep playing,” Ikaryo warned Remy. “Keep singing.”

She was magnificent. She stood tall in her flowered boots, head thrown back with the wild red waves of her hair rippling down her back, the power of her voice pouring from her arched throat.

The pale swath of her gown had become a luminous backdrop for the resonark, its prismatic energy pulsing over her, brightest across the shining instrument.

He could’ve listened forever, awash in her wordless, soaring aria.

But she’d asked him to play with her.

So he stood behind her with his hands barely on her shoulders.

Not restricting her spirited dance with the guitar, but holding her, amplifying with the biomech that too often reminded him of what he’d lost and left behind.

Now, the augments were a newfound voice, no longer a source of distance, but connection.

The contact between them intensified the song, adding layers of complexity and depth—and the resonark resounded with loops of fractal light expanding now: the anomaly coming into focus.

As Remy spun the harmonic resonance toward a rapturous climax, the shimmering energy swelled too, floating from her and the instrument up into the woven veils.

Infinitely fragmenting edges remained, with threads of infrared and ultraviolent and beyond in either direction merging into the yarn, the fringe bleeding into unknown reaches of spacetime…

The resonance overtook all his senses, the apex of energy a vast, engulfing pressure.

The monstrous, liquified roar swept his augments offline, leaving him half deafened and blind.

But he could still wrap his arms around Remy, holding her even tighter on the edge of this oblivion, and he felt her still singing into that glimpse of the infinite void.

Around them, the air and light itself were compressing, as if they were approaching an event horizon beyond which…

The resonark ignited in a shockwave of energy, arching in omnispectral abandon across the ballroom—though not a thread wavered or a votive flickered.

The shadowlight at its heart belled outward as if it would go on forever…and then with a wild, ringing chime, it finally coalesced into a glowing plasmic sphere, caught within the knitted knotwork.

A charged hush expanded through the audience, almost like a sound. Suspended above them, the resonark radiated gently within wavelengths visible to most of the beings aboard. Even as it unfurled along its outer limits in endless fractals of light, the anomaly’s nucleus sustained.

While his augments rebooted, Ikaryo assessed the situation: the resonark seemed stable and currently contained by…yarn?; its energy was within safe limits; the ship hadn’t powered up and flown off with them again, at least not yet.

Had they done this together, the passengers and crew, their combined attention finally expressing the quantum anomaly?

Because everyone was staring up with species-specific variations of Evens’ rapt expression. No fear or loathing of its otherness. They’d all joined the IDA—willing to step out into the darkness and dangers of space—because they’d believed love was out there, somewhere, waiting for them.

Even the crew, Ikaryo admitted to himself. They’d known what kind of ship they were signing on to. It was right there in the name, after all.

They’d all yearned for connection. And out here, they found each other: the captain and Felicity, the passengers who’d been strangers and were now friends and some lovers, a family.

Out here, those bonds had become clear, the way he’d attuned the view of faraway stars to Remy’s eyes.

He buried his face in the red waves of her hair, breathing the living heat of her. Though she’d never added words to the song, in the shimmering afterglow of his dazzled senses, he heard the resonark call to them.

Not words, but impressions.

Vast darkness pierced by a wound of light. Or was it light marked by darkness? Both? The interpretation was beyond comprehension, only feeling. Something was marred or…missing? A melody not yet completed by its harmony, out there, somewhere.

But there was a promise too. Threading through it all, binding everything together: a profound peace that both steadied and lifted, a joy expressed in every chord and cadence of song and silence.

Love. Though the love-made-music had spanned a bridge over the abyss, the final note was not resolved. A yearning to find…

Remy let out a shuddering breath, almost a sob, and sagged against him. Ikaryo caught her before she fell.

The guitar clattered to the stage. The jarring clang broke the stasis of the crowd.

Everyone was talking at once, milling to get a clearer look at the resonark glowing in the yarn knot.

The captain and Felicity, along with others from the crew, moved among the passengers, belatedly bringing some order to the incredulous amazement.

But Ikaryo held Remy, cradling her against his chest while she caught her breath.

“What happened?” Her voice was hoarse with strain. He needed to get her some tea with honey.

“You made contact with the resonark.”

She shook her head hard, frowning at him through tangled red strands. “We.”

“We.” He smoothed back her hair to kiss her.

The touch was meant to be tender, relieved and admiring, but she wrapped her hand behind his head, pulling him down to deepen the kiss, her thumb brushing along his jaw where the echo of their song still thrummed in his biomech bones. More breathlessness and the scent of salty Earther tears.

Not tears? Despite her moan of protest, he lifted his head to stare down at her. “Are you bleeding?”

“I haven’t played in a while.”

Gently, he caught her hand. Every fingertip was blistered and several cuticles ripped. “Remy…”

“I’ll heal.” She gazed up at him, the green and amber of her eyes bright as gemstones in the light of the resonark above. “Sometimes it’s worth getting hurt for something beautiful.”

He kissed her knuckles one by one, then helped her to her feet. Only to discover his own knees were none too steady, so they leaned together.

That same closeness was everywhere in the ballroom, and he realized they’d all felt the resonark’s…plea?

From several lengths away, the captain leaped to the stage, fur bristling, his uniform straining to contain the fuzzy worry. But his growl was steady and solicitous as he looked them over carefully.

The resonark pulsed behind him, but he ignored it. “What do you need? Water, wound sealant”—he nodded to Remy’s hands—“a prize for saving the ship?”

“Did we?” Remy’s voice cracked, and she wrapped her bloody fingers around her throat. “Save the ship?” she whispered stubbornly.

Ikaryo put his hand over hers. “Hush. I’ll get you a cordial with honey.”

“Here’s tea.” From the floor, Felicity lifted the cup to Nehivar. “With all the honey.”

He hefted her bodily and easily up beside him, not spilling a drop as he swiveled the cup to Ikaryo who held it to Remy’s lips.

“Suvan’s readings indicate all the quantum tunnels that were destabilizing our systems are closing.

Even the idiosyncratic power glitches that Griiek noted in previous refits are cleared. ”

“Healing,” Felicity said. “Speaking of, here’s the med kit.” She touched Remy’s shoulder. “Sorry, I should’ve at least had water for you. I don’t think we understood…” A sheen brightened her blue eyes. “And after that performance, it should be Dom Perignon or the ET equivalent, I’ll have to check.”

“Actually, that’s my job,” Ikaryo said, chagrined. “But I had no idea either.” His voice trembled, but he kept his hand perfectly aligned with Remy as she gulped her tea.

She hummed out a breath as she finished. “Me neither,” she rasped. “I’ve never gone that hard.”

Despite his exquisite gentleness, using only as much pressure as his augments suggested, she winced as he cleaned her fingers and sealed the wounds.

“Looks worse than it is,” she whispered. “I swear.”

“Yes, I’ve heard you swear,” he whispered back. “Twice.”

She flashed him a wicked grin before ducking her head against his shoulder to hide it.

Nehivar finally glanced up, his narrowed golden eye shot with refracted rainbows.

“So, our ghost is out of the machine. We need to complete our systems checks and any repairs. But after that…” He rumbled when Felicity pressed against him.

“I know, I know. I may be the captain, but we are all in this together.” He cast another disgruntled look at the resonark. “Including it.”

Was that a brighter pulse from the anomaly above? In its new cage of music and beauty—a lattice of love—the resonark waited.

They all looked at each other again and Earther-shrugged in unison.

“We’ll finish up here,” Nehivar told Ikaryo. “Take Remy to her room and relax. All-hands in the morning. Here, with passengers too.”

Remy and med kit tucked under one arm, Ikaryo swung them by the bar and grabbed a bottle with his other hand. They’d almost made it to the salon doors when someone started clapping. And then it was a sudden jubilant thunder.

Conscious of Remy’s enervation, he pivoted them on his boot heel.

From the captain’s slow clap, to Chef’s fluttering phonoplasts, to Griiek’s excessive four-armed elation, every body in motion created the roll of praise. Mariah, who was leading the applause, whistled and shouted, “Encore!”

Ikaryo guessed the outburst of laughter wasn’t so much amusement as euphoric release.