Page 12 of Hijack! (Cosmic Connections Cruise #1)

Felicity glanced uneasily around the room. “This is where we first saw it.”

A power distortion…or something else? The shadow in the corridor reaching for Felicity and the other passengers had triggered all his Kufzasin instincts. “Tell me what Evens said about the ship being…haunted.”

She stopped abruptly with a thud of her magnetic boots. “You’re serious?”

“Always.”

Her blue eyes narrowed. “Okay, now I think you’re teasing me. But… A ghost?”

“We know this ship had anomalous power issues. Both Griiek, who I trust, and Suvan, who has crossed lightyears with me, say it’s not a problem with the ship.

So it is…something else.” He rumbled under his breath.

“Evens sought me out for this position, and when I asked why, he said he was looking for”—Ellix summoned up the Earther male’s phrasing—“someone who ‘won’t be foolishly charmed by my little love boat’. ”

“Foolishly charmed,” she grumbled under her breath. “Oh no, not Captain Never-Smiles.”

His whiskers twitched. “He said he wanted an experienced appraisal of the vessel’s suitability as flagship.”

Felicity pursed her lips. “You mentioned your last ship had…issues.”

“Exploded under attack by pirates,” he clarified. “One of the reasons I agreed to this cruise was because a repeat of that situation seemed unlikely.”

“And yet.” She hovered beside him when he popped open an access panel in the bulkhead behind the bar. “So what are we looking for?”

“Signs of a power distortion.”

“What do distortion signs look like?”

He slanted a glance at her. “Catastrophic decompressions. Immolating flames. Creepy black fractals.”

“Uh, if those are my options, I guess I’ll choose the last one.”

He reviewed the room sensors and local logs, finding nothing out of the ordinary.

“What’s this?” She poked a small spike in the energy readings.

“That’s when everyone started screaming.”

She huffed out a breath. “So the monitors could capture us freaking out, but not why we were freaking out? What kinds of energy can we perceive that the sensors would miss?”

“All instruments were upgraded during the ship’s remodel, but this was never intended to be a calibrated scientific expedition, so none of the more exotic energies are tracked.”

“But all of our guests perceived it.” She tapped one fingertip against her lower lip in counterpoint to the ubiquitous datpad thumping against her thigh.

He couldn’t decide which one was more distracting and forced his gaze away.

“Everyone aboard right now was selected to be compatible across all relevant bioelechemical baselines. So what do we all have in common that has no relevance to ship functions?”

Deliberately focused on the guts of the panel, he didn’t answer her, but she seemed not to require anything from him as she continued to mutter under her breath while scrolling through the passenger manifest. “Some can see into ultraviolet or infrared, but others can’t.

Some are sensitive to pheromones, but others wouldn’t notice.

Some have acuity into the ultrasonic or infrasonic or maybe only a range of that scale.

What would we all be looking for that would let us see the anomaly? ”

“A cosmic connection,” Ellix said distractedly. “According to the brochure.”

She grabbed his elbow, jostling him out of his focus. “Could that be it? New relationship energy? Wanting to see and be seen. That heightened sense of possibility. Can we calibrate a sensor to decipher that?”

“You want me to scan for love?” He stared down at her. “Suvan will laugh himself to death if I ask him to calculate the waveform for emotional intimacy.”

“Well, considering Chief Adrakh never comes up from the engine cellar, I’m not entirely convinced he exists. Unlike this anomaly.” She bounced lightly on her toes, the metal taps of her crampons clicking on the deck. “Okay, maybe it’s not exactly the power of love. But something like that.”

“Lust,” he murmured.

She stilled. “What?”

“That energy you are talking about, but sharpened to a point.”

Her cheeks flushed with a rush of blood. “I suppose that’s one way of… But maybe I’m just wishful thinking.”

He gave her a slow, dangerous blink. “Wishfully thinking about lust?”

“No! I mean, yes, but only in the strictly professional context of helping you pin down this power surge or whatever it is.”

“You want to…pin me down?”

She reared back so far she might’ve tipped over if not for her weighted boots. “No! I mean… I just meant I want to truly be a valued member of your crew. I’m not only some closed-worlder who can’t handle herself when things get tough. I—”

“Felicity.”

“I know you think I’m weak and always worrying, but I wouldn’t be here if—”

“Felicity.” He enclosed her clenched fist in his paw, achingly aware of the size difference. “I shouldn’t have teased you. I’m sorry. Of course you should be right here.”

He hadn’t meant that to sound so earnest. Although how could it be anything but? The little silence hung between them, full of awkwardness… And maybe promise.

Tenderly, he squeezed her fingers then released her. Because he couldn’t make any promises, not when his ship was in trouble.

Forcing his attention back to the task, he tapped his comm to reach the rest of the crew. “I want to prep for intra-ship self- containment. If anything happens, we will seal off every module from the others.”

Felicity made a soft noise under her breath. “Cut each other off?”

Rather the opposite intent of this cruise. But as a last resort, what else could they do?

She’d left her little planet in pursuit of a charming fantasy and was now discovering the same truth as a na?ve young Kufzasin signing aboard his first merchant freighter: the dangerous universe had no gentleness for wandering souls, and while some memories of light might reach across the lightyears between stars, that vast distance was too much for the fragile connections spun between hearts to overcome.

Setting his jaw, he primed the dividing bulkheads between modules. If anything disastrous happened, he could cut away the lifepod and blow isolated sections of the ship as necessary.

If he’d been wearing a feelings button, the ruthless practicality of the decision would’ve burned black as space.

As the crew sent updates on their work, Ellix battened down the salon. With passengers and crew secured, he could turn his attention to regaining control and reestablishing outgoing comms.

“You think it will be bad.” Felicity’s voice shook. Just a little, but he felt it more than heard it.

The warning blink on the salon monitor flashed in her wide eyes, dulling the soft blue to gray. He closed the access panel with a hard click—as if that could shut away the trouble.

“Maybe there’s a reason I never smile.”

She winced. “I shouldn’t have teased you.”

“But you weren’t wrong.” Despite the precarious situation aboard a ship in trouble and the perilous tension between them—or maybe because of all that—he found himself reaching for the message cube in his pocket. “After this cruise, I’ve been summoned home.”

The fine arcs of pale hair above her eyes rose, and he suspected the gesture indicated some confusion; he himself was wondering why he’d revealed that.

But still she reached out to grasp his arm, careful of the healing gel patches she’d dabbed over him.

“You’ll get there,” she reassured him. “We’ll figure this out, or someone will come looking for us, or…

” Her fingers, half lost in his fur, tightened a bit, as she gazed up at him.

“Unless… Were you not wanting to go home? Is that why you took this job?”

How had she assessed that? Was he wearing a feelings button in place of his missing eye? “It is a celebration of my great-grandparents who have been mated for one hundred years, a familial obligation that involves some outdated rituals.”

“Ah. Those kinds of gatherings can be…tricky. How bad are the rituals?”

“They will demand an explanation for my lack of mate. They will then attempt to find someone nearby. The older ones will ask why I don’t yet have my own ship. Younger ones will ask why I didn’t kill the pirates. This, from a family of mostly algae farmers. And there will be much dancing.”

Her blue eyes glinted. “You are a fine dancer. As for the rest… Yeah, I can see why you were taking the long way home.”

He grunted. “Maybe I sabotaged the ship to avoid my return.”

She gave him a harder squeeze before releasing him. “Now you are for sure teasing me because I know you would never shirk a commitment.”

The unwavering certainty in her tone felt oddly like a healing salve he hadn’t realized he needed. It eased something within him, but at the same time tightened the awareness between them.

Before he could respond, the light shifted across her face again, brightening her eyes back to their crystalline blue. He glanced over his shoulder to the viewport where the sun was dropping behind the third moon.

“Are we back on course?” Now her voice wavered.

“Delphine,” he snapped, summoning up the remote command console on his datpad. “Report. Do you have the controls?”

Even as he spoke, the ship veered hard. The nearly full eclipse reversed, and the two celestial bodies separated.

“That’s not me, Captain.” The sound of frantic scrabbling came through the comm. “Nav is going crazy with rerouting coordinates. Can’t tell where inputs are coming from.”

“Captain,” called Suvan. “The engines are ramping up. Are we going somewhere?” More frantic sounds, this time of servos whirling faster. “Ah, somewhere at maximum speed?”

Felicity sucked down a breath as the view swerved away from the night’s itinerary to frame only empty space.

Ellix swiped grimly at his datpad, blanker than the viewport which at least glinted with some distant stars. “We’ve been hijacked.”

As the three moons continued on a flirtatious dance with their sun, the Love Boat I rocketed into the black.