Seven Days - A Space Romance (2 page)

Solar flare. A massive geomagnetic storm heading their way.

Screwed.

They were on the edges of fringe-space, and they had a lifepod. They could all climb into it and launch, and shuttle out. Lifepods had a smaller version of the big sprint drive that the
Alcestis
did, and it could get them into the next system. The good news was that they’d be safe from the geomagnetic storm. The bad news was that they wouldn’t be able to get home. They’d have to wait for rescue. And the pods weren’t equipped with much in the way of supplies. They’d have to go stasis.

Kaden watched Dr. Nevis’s mouth thin with displeasure. Arrogant prick. Like this was Garcia’s fault.

At his side, Zoey sat, looking soft and vulnerable and sad. “So the trip is over and the lifepod’s not a failsafe?”

“Bad news all around,” Garcia said. “Sorry, Science Officer. You’ll get your trip next time.”

“Hopefully,” Dr. Nevis said, a bitter sound in his voice. “You said yourself that it’s low on supplies.”

As Kaden watched, Zoey seemed to slump in her chair. Assholes. He’d gone to her side immediately, ignoring the annoyed looks the scientist had shot his way when he muscled in and wrapped an arm around her, hugging her close to his chest. He’d tried to keep his distance, but fuck that. Kaden had seen her first. Like hell he’d think about protocol when she needed comfort. If she wanted a damn hug, he was going to be the one to fucking give it to her.

She’d hesitated for a moment and then sank into his embrace, needing the comfort. He couldn’t imagine what she was feeling on her first trip out. Anxiety? Disappointment? Sadness? Either way, it warranted a hug, even if it was only from a meathead XO. He rubbed her back.

Kaden knew what this all meant. He’d been an XO for a long time, and in the military for longer. Everyone heard a story or knew a buddy that had run into a string of bad luck and had to abort a mission.

Some didn’t come back from a trip. It happened. You didn’t serve in the military without expecting misfortune to head your way sooner or later.

But poor Zoey was a science officer. She expected a nice, quiet little trip to her spot in fringe space, expected to take some pictures, catalog some samples, and head back to the university she worked for. Judging from her prim demeanor ever since she’d stepped on the ship, he’d guessed that this was her first space expedition.

Hell of a first trip.

#

Hours later

“
We have a lot to do, Science Officer Maldonado,” Dr. Nevis said again, distracting her from her anxiety. “I want you to do a data-dump of all the records we have in the system.”

That could take hours, but it was a mindless task. She nodded. “I’ll get to work uploading the catalog.”

“Good,” he said in that same, pinched voice. He studied her for a minute and then added, “I’ll meet with the meathead to determine exactly how much time we have left and how much data storage we can utilize.”

She nodded, inhaling a deep breath. Okay. No panic. There was plenty of time to jettison the life pod and get out of the star system. No problem. She got to work, the infernal hiss of the computer’s recorders as she uploaded data into one large mega-file irritating, so she put on her earbuds and turned on some soothing music.

This trip had turned into a disaster. They should have never stopped at Ceti 17 for that scanning run. It had turned up nothing, and all it had done was strand them here. She felt a surge of resentment for Dr. Nevis in that moment, since it had been his suggestion to do an unplanned trip to the wreck of the
Cephalon
, but how could anyone have thought this would happen?

Certainly not Garcia. He’d been swearing a blue streak in the cockpit ever since they’d separated to work on shutting the ship down. Swearing and drunk. She didn’t envy the meathead for having to try to calm him down.

She thought of Kaden for a moment. Always quick to laugh and tease, even when she tried to keep distance between them. He didn’t act like any other XO she’d been stationed with. Science officers and meatheads generally didn’t mix well, but Kaden seemed determined to ignore those boundaries, inviting her to play cards with him in the mess hall after hours and just grinning knowingly when she’d invariably turn him down. SO and XO didn’t mix, as Dr. Nevis was constantly in her ear, telling her. But the looks Kaden gave her—with those hot, dark brown eyes and beautiful skin the color of old Earth brandy... well. Perhaps he’d be worth looking up after the voyage, provided he was still interested.

Probably not, though. Men like him didn’t go for stuffy, buttoned-up scientists like herself. He was an enormous man, over six and a half feet tall, with extremely broad shoulders and a build that said he spent his downtime in the ship’s gym, working out. She’d caught sight of him without his shirt on once, and had been surprised at the tattoos that crawled up the entire length of one arm and covered his chest. Tattoos were the mark of a soldier, she thought primly. You never saw a science officer covered in that sort of thing. Just meatheads.

Then she winced, because now
she
was using the derogatory term that Dr. Nevis had. Every SO referred to the XO on their ships as “meatheads” since basically they were there to provide muscle. And as one, they were usually loud, brash, and soldiers to the core. While Kaden wasn’t loud, he was definitely a soldier.

Well, almost, she told herself, thinking of his hair. Most soldiers wore theirs shaved down to the scalp so it’d fit under space-helmets with ease. As their two-month-long journey had gone on, Kaden had let his shaved hair grow out, and the black locks now tumbled over his forehead in an inky spill that Garcia had disapproved of, but Zoey’s fingers itched to touch.

Not that she’d get the chance. They were going back tomorrow on the lifepod. Oh well. The batch of records finished updating and she typed in the sequence to upload to the nearest communication satellite.

It paused, thinking, then came back with NO RESPONSE.

Mystified, she punched in the sequence again and waited.

NO RESPONSE.

Zoey pulled off her ear buds, getting up from her seat. She frowned and went to the next terminal, sending a test message to the main comm link.

NO RESPONSE.

She flipped on the ship’s comm. “Hey, Garcia? Did you shut down the comm unit?”

“Now why would I do a damn stupid thing like that, you little—”

She shut down the link. Apparently Garcia was a bad drunk. Still, something was wrong. She couldn’t make it work. She sent another signal and watched it die again. Panic thudded in her chest and she pushed out of the science lab. “Dr. Nevis?”

Kaden came around the corner, wiping his hands with a dirty towel. “Everything ok?”

“I don’t know. I can’t send files to the comm relay. Garcia says he didn’t touch it. Have you seen Dr. Nevis?”

He shrugged easily, those big shoulders moving. “Want the meathead to take a look at it?”

She flushed, hesitating, then moved aside so he could enter the science lab. He brushed past her without his usual knowing smile and moved to her panel and typed in a sample sequence.

Same response she’d received. He glanced at one of the other comm units, then pulled open the panel and began to check the wiring. “Everything looks to be in good order here. I’ll check down in the main engine room, just in case a wire got loose or something overheated.”

A low rumble began, shaking the small craft. Zoey grabbed at Kaden’s arms, then retreated when she realized she was clinging to him. She brushed her hands down the front of her science officer uniform and then shook her head. “What was that?”

Kaden’s mouth thinned into a grim line. “That
fucking
bastard.”

As she watched, he raced out of the science lab and tore down the hall of the ship.

What was going on?

Zoey’s heart tripped and then she chased after Kaden as he raced down the main hall of the
Alcestis
, heading toward the berth of the ship. There were only two things in that direction—the engine and the lifepod...

Oh god. She went to the nearest panel and leaned heavily against it, feeling weak. “Computer, give me a reading on the lifepod attached to this ship.”

The system chimed. “I am sorry, Science Officer Maldonado. There is no lifepod attached to the
Alcestis
.”

She would not scream. She would
not
scream. “Where is Captain Garcia?”

“Captain Garcia is in the cockpit. Would you like for me to—”

“What about Dr. Nevis?”

“Dr. Nevis is no longer on board the
Alcestis
.”

Damn him. He’d fucking left them there! She wanted to throw up. They’d had a chance for all of them to get out of here... and he’d left them?

Why? Why would he do such an awful thing? He’d been acting cagey all morning, but hell, she’d been upset too. She thought he was just anxious, like she was. Instead, he’d been planning to abandon them the entire time.

“Fuck!” Kaden shouted in the distance, and she abandoned the computer panel to locate him.

She found him in the engine room, a mass of cut wires in his hand. He turned at the sight of her and raised it, furious. “That asshole cut all the communication cables. He took off on the only lifepod and cut our goddamned signal.”

“Why would he do that?”

He raked a hand through his tangled, too-long hair that she’d been daydreaming about only minutes ago. “Lifepods only carry enough supplies for a two-month window for four passengers. With only one person on board, he can extend it for four times as long, and we’re out here in fringe-space.”

And if the
Alcestis
couldn’t send a communication back to the relay satellite, no one would ever know what happened. “He’s covering his tracks,” she said numbly. “He ditched us and ensured that we wouldn’t be able to tell on him.”

“And he’s going to return home a fucking hero with some bullshit story about mutiny or something. And we’re fucking screwed. No one’s going to know what happened to us.”

She stared at him.

They were alone. In space. Trapped.

And in seven days, they would be dead. All three of them. “Someone should go tell Garcia.”

Kaden ran a hand down his face, shook his head. “He’s at the instrument panels. He already knows.”

But she couldn’t leave it at that. She had to tell him face to face. Like a human. He deserved that much, didn’t he? So she turned and walked down the long corridor to the cockpit.

The door to the cockpit was closed. Nice. He was probably passed out and hadn’t realized the gone-from-bad-to-worse news yet. She swallowed hard, feeling sick. They’d been abandoned. They were going to die here, out in fringe-space. Alone. Dead in the water. Waiting, waiting, waiting for the end.

She pressed her thumb to the biometric reader and waited for the door to open again.

It did a short moment later. And she stared, in horror, at the dead body of the captain. His military-issue blaster still hung out of his mouth, one limp hand curled around the trigger. His brains were splattered all over the control panel.

And then it really, truly hit her. They were going to
die
.

Zoey burst into tears and went to get Kaden.

She was alone in space with the meathead.

#