by Lydia Hope
“Aw, crap.”
Despite the loving companionship, Simon maintained a strict no-sex policy. And maybe he was right. Having to strap themselves to a chair before the act would be a major mood killer.
Only when he was coming off stasis did he allow any sort of intimacy, encouraged it even, probably because he knew how much Gemma hated when he meditated. When his bodily systems shut down to recharge, the essence of him disappeared, and she always got a feeling like she was left completely alone. It was not a pleasant feeling, and every time he checked out - which, thankfully, wasn’t often, - she had to work hard to keep the panic at bay.
And every time he was done, and his energy stirred and filled the hollowed space, she would approach him. He always responded, sleepy, sluggish, the film still covering his eyes. They would snuggle and touch, kissing long and deep and tenderly, filling her heart with renewed hope and peace.
All in all, this dreaded flight wasn’t turning out too badly, and Gemma had gradually relaxed and began to accept her new reality as normal.
But she hated zero gravity with a passion. Every damn thing floated, even dust. Especially dust. Keeping the space clean required ingenuity. The joys of going to the bathroom and maintaining personal hygiene, a challenge in any small space shared with a member of the opposite sex, were magnified tenfold where particles didn’t stay put.
Forcing her mind off the things she couldn’t change, Gemma decided it was time for her daily physical exercise. Exercising was paramount to keep her muscles from atrophying, and it helped her decompress. Besides, she found physical activity to be somewhat fun in this environment.
She anchored her body against the metal pipe that ran under the ceiling and turned upside down. The angle didn’t matter as weightlessness meant up could become down at the slightest push, but Gemma liked to change positions to keep things fresh.
She started with light stretches before progressing to resistance training with the help of strategically tied ropes. Here, her bad foot didn’t matter because there was no weight for it to bear. So there were pros of existing in space, after all.
Simon turned away from the controls and was looking at her. He always did when she exercised. He liked to watch her move, no matter how preoccupied he was. And lately, he seemed to be preoccupied more than usual.
“Look at you. You’re a seasoned astronaut now,” Simon’s eyes were glowing, letting Gemma know that he wanted her.
“Oh, yeah?” she grinned as she raised her leg above her head, which was pointing down for him since she was hanging off the pipe like an arboreal three-toed sloth. “Is that what astronauts usually do?”
“You are a very special astronaut,” he murmured. “You would make your brother proud.”
Gemma’s smile faded slowly. “Hardly. Foy was a trained fighter pilot. He would have been in your chair now. And I’m just… me.” She shrugged slightly. “Along for a ride.”
She realized she hadn’t thought about Foy in a long time. How strange. With her being in space, in a ship, Foy should be on her mind often.
“There you go again, giving yourself little credit,” Simon was watching her intently. “Any brother would have been proud of how well you coped with things you were unprepared for. You kept on going when it got rough. You made some hard choices.”
He was hinting at her decision to leave her old life for him, an alien.
Gemma abandoned her exercise and floated limply in mid-air, tethered to the pipe. For the first time, she tried to imagine what Foy would have thought of her situation with Simon.
Foy had considered aliens to be the enemy. His job had been to thwart their attempts to invade their home. The line of demarcation between them and us had never been blurred in his mind, and Gemma was pretty confident that Foy had never interacted with an alien beyond shooting at them from his fighter ship. What would he have thought of her if he knew how hotly she burned for Simon, how hard she came when he plunged to the hilt into her wet, willing body, making her writhe in mindless animal lust as he balled her under him, hard and fast and strong?
“They were my choices to make. I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
Simon’s raised eyebrows provoked her into defending herself further. “Life molds us, Simon. I am no longer the Gemma I was when I left The Islands. Had he lived, Foy wouldn’t have been the same Foy I grew up with. Perspectives change. Things you never knew existed become precious.” She gave her lover a direct look and added softly, “Surely, you can relate.”
“Unlike you, I never had a choice to make.”
“You could have easily left Earth without me. You could have escaped the prison long before you did.”
“No, I couldn't have. I made no choices, and I had nothing to question.”
She let go of the pipe and floated to Simon’s chair. Taking his hand into hers, she raised it to her mouth and kissed each long clawed finger.
“Maybe you’re right,” she admitted. “Maybe there wasn’t a choice for me, either. Because every time I feel afraid and start having regrets, I think back to what happened and analyze what I could've done differently. And I can come up with nothing. If time rolled back and I had to do it all over again, I’d still choose you.”
She felt his unwavering attention and a rare pulse of inner energy coming off him that she’d come to recognize as heightened emotions. She searched his dear features for a sign of tenderness and love, knowing that it was an ingrained habit she was going to have to kick. Rix didn’t display emotions through facial expression. This subtle energy wave was his way of demonstrating affection.
As focused as she was on him at the moment, she noticed signs of strain in the pronounced pallor of his hollow cheeks. His normally liquid eyes were dull. Even in the low lighting, he didn’t look to be in peak condition.
Gemma frowned. “When was the last time you ate?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Hmm.”
To think of it, when was the last time she’d seen him meditate to restore his energy? He looked like he sorely needed some stasis now.
“Simon, you need to rest. Let me take over the watch.”
They had been by themselves in space, in a vacuum, for three months. It wasn’t like he had to navigate an intersection at rush hour, so he could well afford a few hours of R and R.
“I can watch over the screen,” Gemma offered. “Come, go get some sleep. I’ll wake you up if something goes wrong, you know I will.”
He acted like he didn’t hear her. She played with his fingers until he gently tugged his hand away.
“Simon?”
“Maybe later. For now, how about you sit down and buckle up?”
“Why?”
He was slow to respond, and the first frisson of unease tingled along her spine.
“Simon, what aren’t you telling me?”
Finally, he said, “We are being followed.”
“We are? By who?”
“By pirates.”
“Excuse me?”
“By pirates.”
Automatically, Gemma sailed to her chair and strapped herself in. “I had no idea they existed out here.”
“They exist everywhere.”
“Are you sure? This,” she waved her hands around, “isn’t exactly a prize.”
“They don’t need much. The way it works, they shoot your ship up, killing all on board and damaging the vessel. Once your crew is out of commission, they snare your ship with special magnetic nets and tow it to their haven. Pirates are known to repossess abandoned space stations and park them in dark corners of the Universe making sort of floating islands that can be moved at any time. There they dock the captured ship and take it apart to sell for parts. If there is any cargo, even better, they barter it too. That’s it. All done in space. No need for a landing on any planet. Your ship simply disappears.”
Gemma couldn't get her head wrapped around the idea that intergalactic piracy was a thing. “But… It’s a crime! Why isn’t anything d
one about it?”
Simon shook his head. “It’s space. It belongs to everyone and no one. There are no laws and no enforcers.”
The effects of what she was hearing were chilling. “Are you sure that whoever is following us are pirates?”
“They have been observing us from afar for about two weeks, and now they’re approaching.”
“Two weeks?” She was flabbergasted. “You never told me.”
“Because I wasn’t sure then. I am sure now.”
“We’ve got to do something!” she exclaimed, adrenaline starting to push through her veins, mixed with fear.
Simon hesitated before offering an answer, and the fact that he did so made Gemma’s spirits plummet. “Butan has no weapons for defense. It isn’t armored to withstand rocket fire. It is as maneuverable as a sweeper on a narrow street, and only when the navigation system decides to respond to commands. And we’re almost out of the crystal powder to feed the boosters.”
Gemma placed her hands on her chair’s tarnished armrests that had long ago lost their padding. “Is there good news?”
“Pirates prey on the fringes of well-traveled routes.” Simon cocked his head in that distinct manner of his. “I guess we’ve made it to our destination.”
“That’s wonderful! It means we’re close to being saved. We can’t give up now.”
“I’m not giving up.”
“What’s our plan?”
“Evade.” He didn’t have to spell out Until the crystal power is used up. She got it. She wasn’t going to think about what would happen after.
“How much time do we have?”
The pixelated control screen in front of them, the only working one out of Butan’s three, was by now clearly showing an outline of an object behind them. As they watched, a heat source separated from the object and started a rapid progress in their direction.
This time, Butan's temperamental collision warning system reacted appropriately. The panel lit up, a discolored indicator above the cockpit window flashed in warning, and the aircraft was suddenly flooded with sounds of a reedy alarm.
“We don’t have any time.”
Simon jerked a lever and pushed three adjacent buttons in. Butan reacted by whistling and whooshing deep in its bowels. Gemma took the sounds to be those of a sharp acceleration, but weightlessness and vacuum prevented her body from feeling any change in speed or trajectory.
“What is happening?”
“Trying to drop off to a lower plane.”
“Is it working?” Her heart was in her throat.
Simon didn’t reply. His attention was consumed by the monitor where the missile resembling a pencil was traveling speedily, zoomed in on them. If it found its target, the derelict Butan would have little to offer in terms of parts.
“Are we turning away? I can’t tell.” Gemma was straining her seat belt, stretching her neck to get closer to the screen.
“We turned. We’re dropping. Let’s hope the missile is not self-aiming.”
Suddenly, the siren stopped bleating, and warning flashes stopped. With bated breath, Gemma tracked the missile’s on-screen progress as it got closer and closer to the dot that represented Butan. She braced for impact, reaching for Simon’s hand to hold on to. He squeezed her fingers back.
“It’s passing us by. Look, you can see it.”
As he said it, Gemma tore her eyes from the screen and focused on the dark cockpit window. Above them, the oblong shape of the projectile appeared and hovered as if suspended before growing smaller as Butan angled down and away.
On the screen, the missile passed the center with the dot and kept on going.
Gemma expelled a breath and relaxed her cramped hands. “Are we safe now?”
“We’ve survived the first round.”
“They aren’t going to leave us alone,” she came to a bitter realization.
Simon answered her implied question indirectly, “Lucky for us, their weapons are basic point-and-shoot types. I can dodge them.”
And that was what he did. Time stretched, hours blending into one thick, gooey unit of existence that wouldn’t end, filled with acute concentration for Simon and a swirling mix of apprehension and uncertainty for Gemma.
The pirate cruiser relentlessly pursued them, constantly adjusting its position to catch Butan into its crosshairs. Once it did, as it invariably was able to do, it would release another one of its lethal projectiles, making Simon scramble to maneuver their clunky contraption away from danger and putting Gemma into the state of sweaty panic.
Exhaustion had begun to set in. She unbuckled - what was the point of fastening seat belts when any collision would be their last? - and got some water. Her throat was parched and she was weary from stress.
Returning to the front, she checked the screen from behind Simon’s shoulder. Even her eyes felt gritty and tired.
“Is it me or do they seem closer?” She pointed to the blurry trapezoid shape that their computer assigned to the enemy ship. The shape blinked steadily as it crawled across the screen, getting too close to the center for comfort.
“They’re faster than us.”
It was another upsetting piece of news to add to their bucket of demoralizing facts. Gemma didn’t understand much of what was required to successfully fly a ship, but even she figured that Simon must be a truly exceptional pilot to keep them alive so far. That, or he was a whiz at computer gaming. They must be on level ten by now.
But it wasn’t a game. And despite Simon’s expertise, their ship's limitations were catching up to them.
“What if we turned and went back? You said pirates don’t venture too far into the dead space,” she suggested.
“I’m trying to stay near the route. Coming across another ship is our best bet. A friendly ship,” he clarified without turning to look at her.
“How often do ships travel through?”
“There’s no schedule. And the ‘route’ is an approximate coordinate. Ships can pass each other undetected if they are far enough apart, and still be within the route. It could be another day before we see one. It could be a year.”
Gemma fell silent, thinking about how sending out a distress signal would serve no purpose without a target to catch it. The bottom line, space was too vast. Their ship was a speck, smaller than a molecule in the body of an elephant. Insignificant didn’t even begin to cover their existence.
Yet, ironically, there was no hiding place in all this vastness, and no shelter to shield them from the attack.
She caught sight of Simon frowning, clicking buttons and turning knobs.
“Are they shooting again?” She didn’t want to look at the monitor and see for herself. It wasn’t that she no longer cared, but every emotion seemed dulled, and she felt fatigued and headachy.
“No, they haven’t shot yet. There’s a dark patch. I think it might be an asteroid cluster. We’re heading that way.”
“Aren’t asteroids dangerous?”
“Only if you hit one. I don’t plan on doing that. I am looking for cover.”
Gemma took another sip of water hoping to relieve nausea that was suddenly hitting her harder than usual. How many sips did that make? She frowned. She couldn't take any more. Water was precious. Water was life. Life was… temporary.
She took a deep breath that failed to fill her lungs with enough air. Surprised, she looked over at Simon. His nostrils were fluttering, and he also seemed to be struggling to breathe.
“Simon?”
“I know. We’re leaking oxygen.”
She would have slumped in her chair if she weren’t floating. “How is it possible? Have we been hit without my noticing?”
“The boosters have been working non-stop. The vibration must’ve loosened the old plating and opened up a leak.”
He didn’t have to tell Gemma how screwed they were.
She floated to the crystal-covered back window looking for the asteroids. In all their sojourn, they’d never come close to any cosmic object. S
he squinted into the deep echoing darkness, looking for her first glimpse of the space rocks.
At first, nothing caught her eye, but she kept searching the bottomless pit of darkness, zooming her eyes in and out. And at one point, the optical illusion slammed into focus, and she was able to distinguish a shape. Once detected, she could see it well now.
“I’ve never known asteroids could take the form of a turtle,” she observed from her position by the window.
“What did you say?” Simon asked in a funny voice. He must be also affected by the thin air more than her.
“Yeah, weird, this asteroid.”
To Gemma’s surprise, she heard Simon’s chair squeak as he rotated it getting out. Did he abandon his commander post despite the pirate cruiser riding their ass? Yes, he did, and he pushed himself off with unusual clumsiness, almost slamming into the wall next to Gemma. Had he never seen an asteroid before?
“I don’t see anything.” His Rix eyes, dulled by their ordeal, were glued to the view outside.
“You have to let your eyes go all unfocused. Notice how there’s nothing where the shape is. It blocks the stars.”
Simon was quiet next to her, presumably focusing and unfocusing his eyes. Suddenly he made a strangled sound, almost a moan, and gripped her arm so hard it hurt. Releasing her as abruptly as he’d grabbed her, he turned and pushed himself back to the controls in the same forceful and haphazard way, so unlike his usual smooth and precise maneuvering.
Gemma watched, astonished, as he powered on their comm transmitter and readied it to broadcast. Working frantically, he mashed the pulse button in. The ribbon-thin display above the windshield came to life with hieroglyphic signs that ran like captions, an inscription of the distress signal that was shooting outward, to space, aimed at the… asteroid.
“Simon?” she asked, unsure of what was going on.
He was turning the ship to face the asteroid full-on. The turtle disappeared from the back window to gradually arise in front of them, huge and light-swallowing. A monster.
“Simon, we’re going to collide!”
“Impossible. They’re moving with us.”
“They?”
He turned to her then. “It isn’t an asteroid. It’s a Rix space station.”
