Adrift
Authors: Erica Conroy
Adrift
"Wait!"
Jasmine called out as she sprinted for the civilian transport.
It was the last transport off the planet for the next twenty-four hours, and she had booked passage before she'd swiped evidence for her latest story and was determined not to get stuck here.
If she did, then he would hunt her down and do unspeakable things to her—a thought that made her shiver.
Thankfully the man at the hatch heard and waited for her.
Jasmine made her way through the transport to one of two bunkrooms on board.
She stowed her gear in the recess under her bunk.
The small transport was old and economy class all the way, with dorm style lodgings.
She had the top bunk and some poor schmuck had the unfortunate luck to have the one below her, judging from the belongings stowed there.
Jasmine glanced around the eight person sleeper room and found herself very much alone.
She grinned.
The investigator's itch to find out all she could about her bunkmate needed to be scratched.
She couldn't help it.
Going by the clothes, her bunkmate was a man.
Reserved and practical.
Going by how neatly folded it all was, including his underwear, anal retentive.
"Boring, boring man," she muttered to herself.
"Nosy, opinionated woman," a man's voice said from behind her.
"You forgot annoying and bitchy," she informed him while she rummaged through the rest of the bag.
Norik raised a bemused eyebrow and said, "Any normal person would have stopped what they were doing and offered an apology."
"Well, there's your problem," she told him, "I'm not normal.
Your stuff?"
"Yes," Norik said as he moved closer and collected the items of clothing that she had removed.
He decided her statement was indeed correct when he found everything placed in neat piles.
A normal person would have tossed things about; she had been careful, almost meticulous in her snooping.
"You're not normal either," said Jasmine.
She pulled a rather large archery bow from a case, as evidence.
"This just made you infinitely more interesting."
While he was distracted with his bow, she took the opportunity to look him over and summed him up quickly: tall, dark and handsome.
Typical.
His hair though, annoyed her.
It was shaggy down to his shoulders, as if it were hiding something.
Like the forward person she was and with no care for people's personal space, Jasmine reached out and brushed it back.
"Aha!"
she exclaimed.
"Ridges."
Norik ducked his head back the moment he felt his hair move.
He didn't like being touched.
Touching was personal.
It wasn't something he let a person he didn't know do.
It wasn't something his crew were allowed to do either, unless it was required in the line of duty.
He was also sensitive about the ridges along his neck.
They weren't as pronounced as she made it sound, nor did he have the distinctive and severe facial features that a full Lyrissian would have.
His mixed blood softened the harsh lines and if he smiled, which he rarely did, no one could tell that Lyrissian blood filled his veins.
"Congratulations," he told her, "you found me out.
I am a ridge-necked archer."
Jasmine rolled her eyes but decided to leave him to repack his own belongings.
She took a step away but stopped.
"I should warn you," she said as she leaned toward him with a whisper, "I snore."
With that piece of parting information, she flounced off to find something to eat.
Norik closed his eyes until the annoyance had left the room, then he sighed.
He had managed to survive a war and shore leave but after meeting this woman, he wasn't so sure he could last the week it would take the transport to get him back to his own ship.
Norik was the Commanding Officer of a small Space Corps vessel, the Callisto.
He took his position very seriously.
He sometimes stood in stark contrast to his wild and rough crew, but they were a family and he realized they were only worried about him—unnecessarily worried, as far as he was concerned.
One, however, couldn't argue with a crew that went to extreme measures to enforce one's leave.
In this instance, they had doped his food and left him on a backwater planet with a note and a bag of his clothes.
So here he had stayed, just to humor them, afraid if he returned too early, they might try it again and leave him on a pleasure planet, perhaps tied to some bed with one of those little signs, that said he was available for sex, in the window.
His self-imposed celibacy of ten years had garnered much mocking from his subordinates, but it was something he held firmly to.
The last time he had attempted to be truly intimate, he had almost killed someone.
Plus getting that close to a person was a distraction and would not help him make the tough calls required in his position.
No one should die because he was afraid to make the right decision.
That was the burden of command.
* * *
The next three days passed agonizingly slow for Norik.
He had quickly fallen into a routine, a routine that even he had to admit was quite boring.
He would sleep, wake, eat, exercise and catch up on the reading that his crew had also packed for him.
It was an eclectic assortment of material.
The scientist assigned to his ship had decided that Norik needed to brush up on new theories about time travel, a subject that Norik himself hated with a passion.
He especially hated the stick figure drawings that had been included for added emphasis.
His Chief Engineer was obsessed with anything related to the Ice Warriors or Illarn, which explained why there were two vastly different biographies of the same great Ice Warrior war hero on his reading tablet.
The Medical Chief seemed to be giving him a hint that he should have a passionate affair with someone.
At least that was what he surmised from the seven romance novels he had found hidden among the latest information and specifications for weaponry that had been provided by his Tactical Chief.
But the piece de resistance was from his Second-in-Command.
Norik supposed he shouldn't be surprised.
Still, he couldn't help himself from turning the tablet upside down as he tried to work out the logistics of the position the couple in the picture seemed to have gotten themselves into.
Jasmine spent her days getting to know the few passengers and crew on board the small vessel.
It made her almost forget that she was fleeing from trouble so she could break a huge story.
She knew everyone by name, birthdate, and in one case rank and Corps serial number.
Except for Norik.
All she had on him was a name and what she had so far observed.
He seemed to keep strictly to himself and guarded personal information like a dog would a bone.
That alone made him all the more intriguing.
It meant he had a secret.
A big juicy secret, that begged to be shared, if only she could get him to open up.
Norik was lost in thought when Jasmine parked herself next to him on the table.
She craned her neck to see what was so interesting on the tablet that he hadn't noticed her.
Even she had to blush at the tableau depicted on the handheld screen and not because it was embarrassing.
"It's easier the other way around," she said.
"Hmm?"
Norik asked, suddenly brought back to the here and now.
Jasmine gestured to the tablet and explained in a low voice, "The man and woman need to switch places."
Norik stared at her for a moment before he looked back to the picture.
"It's not a man and a woman," he told her.
"Oh?"
Jasmine said and took the tablet from him without asking.
She held it closer to her face and hit the zoom.
"Oh," she repeated.
"Duarr pornography.
You're a strange man, Norik."
"It's not
my
pornography," he told her and snatched it back.
"Kinky."
"It is not-" he started again but gave up.
More calmly he asked, "What do you want?"
"I wanted to say hi to my bunkmate.
See how you were doing," she told him.
"How are you doing?"
"I'm fine."
Jasmine gave him a few moments to say more.
When he didn't, she continued brightly, "I'm fine too, thank you."
Silence.
The man was a stubborn ass, she decided, standing up.
"Well, I'll leave you alone with your Duarr porn then.
Hope you enjoy it," she said and grinned at him before she wandered off to pump his exercise partner for more information.
Norik watched her leave.
He still stood by his original assessment of her.
The woman was nosy and annoying.
Jasmine had been right about one thing though; she did indeed snore.
Like an Ice Warrior.
He had been close to smothering her with his pillow on two occasions.
Last night, he had been on his feet with pillow in hand, ready to do it when she'd rolled away from him and revealed she slept naked.
A practice he also shared, but when he slept in a room full of other people, he at least had the decency to wear underwear.
She apparently felt no such consideration for others.
He had no idea how long he had stood there, staring at her bare backside before he had climbed back into the bunk below hers.
The boyish figure she presented in the daytime hid the perfect, naked ass he'd been exposed to.
He couldn't rid himself of that image as the now clothed body part walked away from him.
Jasmine was in the bathroom,
powdering her nose
, when the fracas started.
When the ship dropped out of faster-than-light speed, she felt a prickling on the back of her neck, a warning signal she'd felt before when a story was about to turn bad.
The ship wouldn't have reason to stop in the middle of its flight, unless they were experiencing engine trouble or something more nefarious was in progress.
That was when her gut decided to join in.
A good investigative journalist never ignored their gut, and Jasmine was no exception.
A good investigative journalist would also never jump headlong into danger without protection.
She lifted her left foot and pulled a small personal weapon, a sexy little pulse blaster, from a concealed compartment in her boot heel.
Jasmine palmed it and quickly slipped out of the communal bathroom to find out what was going on.
Jasmine prided herself on being prepared for anything, even the dark.
She triumphantly produced a small torch, which she strapped to her weapon.
This allowed her to have one hand free, just in case.
Just in case of what?
she asked herself but didn't dare answer.
Answering those kinds of questions only fed the fear, which was, at the moment, still contained to the knot in her stomach.
She told herself that this was all just a coincidence but still moved cautiously through the ship.
The bridge would be the centre of any activity, that or engineering.
The engineers would be busy trying to get the power back on however and the captain would be more forgiving of an interruption from little old her.
A good commanding Officer could sniff out trouble before his crew.
Norik was better than most COs as he had been trained in tactical and security measures before moving up the command track.
The half Lyrissian was always observing, always ready, except when he was still pondering naked body parts.
The engines stopped first, which made one or two people look around with questioning expressions.
With the engines not producing energy, it meant the ship dropped out of FTL but that the ship's forward momentum still didn't completely stop, not until the helm or some other external force stopped the ship.
Not a happy thought, but a realistic one.
The room was plunged into darkness as the power died.
The whirr of life support halted and most frightening of all, the emergency systems failed to kick in.
It wasn't long before panic started to settle in among the passengers.
All of whom, save for Jasmine, were in the communal area with Norik.
Norik couldn't begin to guess where she was.
He had no idea where the damn woman was, while he maintained calm in the communal lounge.
"Everyone remain where you are," Norik said, employing his most authoritative voice.
"I am sure this is just a small fault.
Please stay where you are, and I will find out what is happening.
Norik left the passengers in the lounge.
They had grouped together for comfort and were, for some reason that escaped Norik, talking about the souvenirs they had bought back on the planet.
Humans
, he thought to himself.
The answer a regular catch-all for anything he didn't understand about the species.
He hadn't ever pretended to understand his father, who had been a brilliant, although rather eccentric diplomat.
Norik supposed this was also why he would never understand the man's suicide.