Adrift (7 page)

Norik started to ask who, but then remembered that there was just the two of them and the prisoner left alive.
Or perhaps just the two of them.
"Oh."

"I didn't kill him," she said and wrapped her arms around herself.

Norik closed his eyes briefly, a mannerism that Jasmine had learned to mean he was either truly annoyed or very frustrated.
"Give me the plasma blaster," he told her as he climbed to his feet.

"I don't have it," she wailed, "I dropped it and ran."

He didn't say anything as he retrieved the knife and then left the room.

Not wanting to be alone, Jasmine propelled herself up from the floor and followed him, at a safe distance.
She provided directions and he glared at her when they reached the room.
She took that to mean she should stay where she was.
The silence unnerved her.

Jasmine waited outside.
She wrung her hands and berated herself for being a horrible murderer.
A torturer.
She was in the wrong line of work and told herself that if she survived this ordeal she would change careers.
Something much more sedate where she wouldn't be a menace to anyone.
Maybe an author.
That way the only people she could butcher would be her characters.

Norik walked into the room and found the injured man sprawled out on the floor.
Jasmine had inflicted a horrific and fatal wound.
The man had severe burns to more than half of his body and was now in shock.
Nothing they could do would save him.
They didn't have the medical equipment to do so or even the drugs to sedate him for more than a few hours.

Norik found where Jasmine had dropped the plasma blaster.
He put down the knife, picked up the energy weapon and made a command decision.

"Is he dead?"
Jasmine asked when Norik reappeared a few moments later.

"He is now," Norik told her.

Jasmine's pale face went even whiter.
She hadn't killed him but Norik had been forced to put the man out of his misery.

"You have bought us a few more days of air," Norik said without any hint of emotion.
"I am going to engineering."

Jasmine couldn't look him in the eye.
Because of her, he was a three-time murderer.
"What should I do?"
she asked him quietly.

"Do not touch anything," he told her sternly.
"Not me, the knife or the plasma blaster.
Do nothing."

Jasmine lowered her head and stared through the darkness at a point on the floor by his feet.
She nodded numbly and waited for him to leave before she let the tears spill forth once more.
She angrily swiped at them and decided that she would do something.
Another body needed moving and it wasn't going to do it on its own.
"You get someone killed, you have to deal with the consequences," she told herself firmly.

Norik had made it down the stairs and into engineering before he felt the urge to vomit.
He spat onto the floor in the corner of the room and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
The pleasure planet with its eternal good weather and sexual promiscuity was looking really good right about now.

He approached the main console and sighed.
Engineering was definitely not his area of expertise.
It hadn't even been a minor when he went through training all those years ago.
Still he knew the basics, anyone in command needed to understand how their vessel worked.
It helped if you knew what your engineer was talking about when something went wrong.
This however was not his ship.
It was a more antiquated and civilian design.
He was able to recognize the essentials.
The Faster Than Light engine was offline.
Thankfully the small amount of antimatter required to fuel this engine looked secure and stable.
It took him awhile to identify the secondary systems but once that was located he soon had the emergency lighting fixed.
He was rewarded by an eerie red glow that was cast over engineering and hopefully the rest of the ship.

Norik stood up and scrubbed his eyes with the heel of his left hand.
He had wasted too much time unconscious due to injury.
The fever had passed but the infection still lingered.
All he wanted to do right then was sleep, but he needed to make sure they had enough air.
How much was enough, he wasn't entirely sure.
Going by his calculations, which he had to admit looked better now that there was one less of them breathing in precious oxygen, it looked as if they had a few more days of oxygen.
If he could get life support operational again, then that could extend it by a couple of weeks.
That seemed to be dependent on bringing at least the sublight engine back online to power it.
The FTL would be better but that was a little over his head.

That was an understatement.
Norik had been well over his head for the past few days.
He leaned against the console for support and knew he should be back in bed, but he couldn't bring himself to go back to the bunk room.
She would be there, with that look in her eyes.
The one that told him he was dangerous.
That she was afraid of him.
He hated it.
He was a Corps Officer, sworn to protect and he had, but now he also needed to protect her from himself.

He clenched both fists.
Pain coursed through his right shoulder and he welcomed it.
It was the equivalent of a bucket of cold water being thrown over him and it helped to clear his mind.
It worked, for a few minutes.
Then he was back to thinking about her.
She permeated every thought and made them worse because of it.

Jasmine taunted him, he knew that.
Teased with her words and her actions.
They crossed verbal swords with each other and he enjoyed it.
He was afraid that he enjoyed it too much.
There was just something about her, something hidden and seductive in her smile.
A smile he had only glimpsed on a few occasions.
The smile he no longer saw because he scared her.

The object of Norik's painful thoughts lay wide awake on her bunk.
She too had vomited.
The first time was when she saw what she had done to that poor man.
The second time was when she had moved him and that left only bile and stomach acid for the third and fourth times.
She hoped they were rescued soon, if only to escape the smell of death and vomit that wafted along the deck.
It was a constant reminder of the sick things she had done to these people.

She heard Norik enter the room a few hours later.
He paused in the doorway as if undecided about being in the same room with her.
The thought made her lower lip quiver and she rolled onto her side, away from him.
He hated her.
She didn't blame him.
His repressed life had probably been going along quite nicely until she stumbled into it and brought a whole heap of dead people with her.

Norik crept into the bunk room and eased himself onto his bunk.
He wondered if he should sleep in the other dorm but recalled Jasmine had moved the corpses there.
He had been surprised when she had told him that.
A lot of people would have left bodies where they fell but she had taken it upon herself to do it.
They probably hadn't been the first dead people she had seen, but earlier today it was obvious that that was the first person she had shot.
He wondered if he had been too harsh on her.
The more he thought about it the more he realized she had been trying to help.

Interrogating the prisoner was something he had wanted to do on his own.
He could easily see how it could have gotten out of hand and she was forced to shoot him in self defense, much like his taking her down when she jumped on him.
Norik felt like a real bastard but he didn't know how to fix this.
He had become socially awkward in the past ten years.
His only interactions with people were professional relationships required of him due to his Corps duties.
Making someone not scared of you was a concept that was beyond him.
Anything he tried would have to wait until morning.

Jasmine awoke with a start.
She wasn't sure what had woken her so she held her breath and listened carefully.
A few moments later she heard it.
A cracking noise.
There it was again.
"Norik?"
she called out quietly.

When he didn't reply Jasmine climbed down from her bunk, her blanket wrapped tightly around her.
"Norik," she tried again.
Jasmine didn't want to get too close in case he flipped out and tried to smoosh her into the deck again.
Two more somethings cracked.
"Norik!"
she hissed.

"Hmm?"
he murmured.

"There's a noise," she whispered to him and edged closer when it looked as if he wasn't going to fly into attack mode.

"What noise?"
he asked and listened.
When he didn't hear anything he told her, "Everyone is dead, go back to sleep."

She opened her mouth, stunned as he turned his back to her.
The noise was a little louder this time and she exclaimed, "That noise!"

Norik looked over his bad shoulder at her and said, "It is the hull contracting as the inside of the ship cools down to meet the temperature outside."

"Oh," she said and then when the reality of what he said settled in she jumped forward and clutched at his arm.
"What?
The outside?
The outside is space!"

Norik inhaled air through his teeth and tried to pry her off.
He wasn't sure what was worse, her nails or her grabbing his existing injury.
"Yes, it is.
We have no functioning life support.
Now let go of me."

"We're going to freeze to death?"
she said and roughly shook him.

"No, I will freeze to death, your demise might be much faster," he told her.
"But if you let go of me now, I might spare you and let you die with me."

"Huh?"

"Please let go of my injured arm," he said.

Jasmine did as he asked.
"Sorry," she mumbled.

"Thank you," Norik said and rolled onto his back to see if she were okay.
Not everyone could shrug off impending doom quite like he could.
Probably because he was still hopeful that they would soon be rescued.
Of course he was a more cynical man than that, but he had buried his panic so it wouldn't overwhelm him and make him do stupid things.
Now was not the time for stupid.
Now was the time to keep a level head and start looking for more clothing and blankets.

"So we are going to die," she said quietly.

"It looks that way," he told her honestly.
"Not how I would like to go."

"How would you like to go?"
she asked him and then gestured to his bunk, "Can I?"

"The other side," he told her so he wouldn't suffer another one of her painful arm grabbings.
Norik closed his eyes as she clambered over top of him and then complained when she slipped and some part of her knocked him in the stomach.

"Sorry," she said and after a moment's hesitation, snuggled closer to him.
"So how would you like to die?"

"It is not something I like to think about," he said and raised his eyebrow as she took his left hand and placed it across her shoulder.
"And you?"

"I thought that dying of old age was boring, right now though it's looking really appealing," she told him.
"But before all of this, I thought going out with a bang and making a headline would be good."

"It would make for an interesting story," he agreed.

"Exactly."

"I see you have thought about this often," he said dryly.

"Yeah," she admitted.
"Us reporter types want to make a mark on the universe and then go out in a fiery blaze of glory before we lose our edge."

"So freezing to death would not be the fiery blaze of glory that you had hoped for?"
he asked.

"Not so much," she said with a sigh.
"More the exact opposite."

"If you would like, I could see if I could breach the antimatter containment," he offered.
"It would make for a very impressive and noticeable explosion."

Jasmine laughed, he felt it reverberate through him and warm his heart.
She wasn't scared of him it seemed, that or she was more scared of their imminent death and just wanted Human contact or contact with any living being, before the end.
A thought that cooled the heat he felt in his veins.