by Hana Starr
It was easy enough to start drowsing off, and as she was drifting in that neither-here-nor-there sort of darkness between waking and sleep, an idea occurred to her.
Moving slowly but steadily, she wiggled her butt back so it pressed against Jax’s lap. His member sprang to immediate attention but he didn’t try to fuck her, or even pull on her to get her closer. Al he did was sigh very softly, breath warm on the fine hairs at the back of her neck.
Then, ever so slowly, Bea wiggled the whole rest of her body back until the massive alien was cradling everything she had. He was like a body pillow, like a heated stone molded to fit her perfect body shape…it was everything she’d been hoping for and more.
“Night, Jax,” she whispered for the first time.
“Night,” came the faint reply.
Chapter Seven
Jax woke again to another blaring screech. His whole body rebelled against the sound in a full-body flinch that saw him crashing to the hard floor of the ship. Then came an unnatural jostle, and he rolled all the way across the hall and into Beatrice’s room –and into Beatrice.
“Oh!” she cried out, as his tumbling body knocked her feet out from beneath her. She collapsed on him, so light on comparison that he hardly felt it. “What’s going on now?” she said, crawling off him and grabbing at the wall.
Jax did the same, following close behind her. He wished he was as light as she so that every motion didn’t shake and wobble him so violently but there was no hope for it. He was thrown all over the interior of the ship as it heaved and bucked around uncontrollably, much like it had when Bea had to take evasive maneuvers back in that asteroid belt. Autopilot couldn’t do that on its own however, so that meant something must be wrong with the ship itself.
Fierce worry woke in his breast, almost debilitating in its strength. He wasn’t a warrior for nothing though and quickly shoved it to the back of his mind, taking assessment of all the risks. They had left their last port several days ago, which meant they were now heading deep into the uncharted territories that Bea showed him on the map she was given. That meant the only places around for an emergency landing were barren wasteland planets that not even the Americans bothered with conquering.
She ran over to her command consoles and her fingers started to fly. Jax came right up behind her and grabbed onto the back of her chair to help hold him steady, even though he was fearful that he might rip it out of the floor one of these times. Only so many things could be going on, and all of them were disasters. He felt like this back in the asteroid belt, and now he was feeling it again. If there was a leak, a fire, a malfunction…
“Damn,” Beatrice swore, and then jabbed a finger at her screen to show him something. As he leaned over her to look, the ship bucked again and he lost his grip on the chair and collapsed sideways. His head struck the side of the counter hard, and pain shot around behind his eyes.
“Damn,” he swore now too, not quite certain why he was repeating a curse that wasn’t in his own language. The bouncing halted for a moment and he reached up to touch the sore spot on his head, blinking rapidly to clear his dizzy vision. His fingers came away slick with his own blood, but there didn’t seem to be any lasting damage if he was already able to see better.
Beatrice was staring down at him in alarm. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he grunted, and pulled himself up to his feet. “But I have no idea how I’m supposed to be a guard when a ship like this can beat me up.”
She gave a startled little laugh, and then jabbed a finger at her screen. The ship was starting to shake again, which definitely wasn’t a good sign. Grabbing hard onto the lipped underside of the console to try and keep himself from taking another tumble, Jax leaned over her shoulder.
Blinking blood out of his eyes, he studied the image. It was a depiction of the layout of the ship in all three dimensions, including details about the speed they were going an color-coded areas of stressed. Basically, the whole entire ship was constantly stressed but that was good. A lack of normal pressure would indicate a breach or damage of some sort.
He was pretty sure that the underbelly of the ship was not supposed to have that much pressure in it, though. The lines surrounding it on the diagram were burning red-hot.
“What does that mean?” he asked, and the ship shot up and down beneath their feet again. Beatrice started to fall, so he reached out and grabbed her hard against his body so she wouldn’t get hurt. After all, who was guarding who now? He couldn’t defend against this. Only she could do that. If she went out of commission…
“It means something is screwed up with my engine,” Bea said tightly, and her features tightened into a mask of fear. “I can’t tell exactly what but damn, it’s extensive. I’ve had some close calls with overheating and things before this but I don’t think that’s what this is. If it is, it’s really bad.”
Jax swore again, this time in his own language. “But it wasn’t damaged when we were at port, was it?”
“No,” she shook her head. “And I didn’t see anything wrong earlier today, either! I always check everything several times a day so something must have just finally given. In a really bad spot.”
His mind raced, and he growled as he came to the obvious conclusion. “Sabotage?”
“Either sabotage or a really clumsy inspector knocked around in a place where they weren’t supposed to be.” She paused and then went on, “Or we were given a free tune-up that someone forgot to make me sign for. Then they screwed it up and instead of taking the blame, just left it go. Damn, this is really bad. This is bad, Jax. I can’t even tell what’s wrong. It looks like some component just gave and took everything else along with it!”
“Stay calm,” he ordered, trying to sound like he knew what he was doing. Was this a test, somehow? Did Dark Peace expect him to know how to handle this and it was merely another part of making sure he was fit for the organization? Or were they trying to get rid of him somehow?
Even if it had been just an honest mistake, they were certainly paying for it now.
“What are our options?”
“We have to crash-land,” Bea replied calmly. “Or make an emergency landing. Either one that it turns out to be. You see, I don’t know how fast all this is going to turn to shit so it could be either one. I need to start scanning these planets and see which one is survivable. If any.”
“A few of them have to be,” he soothed. “Or else Peace Federation wouldn’t have looked at them in the first place, right?”
“Sure,” she said, although she didn’t look convinced. In fact, she looked pretty close to tears.
Jax wrapped his hand around her face and touched his lips to hers. It wasn’t so much a kiss as a transfer of comfort, a way to force her to look into his eyes and know that he was there and that he wasn’t going to give up.
After a bit of stillness, Bea nodded. “Okay. But….um….while I’m doing this, I kind of need you to make the emergency broadcast?”
“Me? Why me? And why now?”
“Because we might not be alive after all this,” she snapped. “And it’s still our duty to make sure these supplies get to where they were supposed to go. If that means sending out a search party to pick through the remnants of our broken ship, so be it. Okay?”
“Alright,” he soothed again, and released her face. Privately, he was proud of her for thinking that way. As a warrior, he was trained to be so calm in such situations to always think of the greater good. He hadn’t realized a civilian might have a sense of preservation of the mission, too.
As Bea turned back to her screen, Jax scooted around behind her to grab at her headset and radio transmitter. The technology was ancient and incredibly simple. But, who to dial?
Quickly, he ran through the index of frequencies and decided to just patch straight through to Peace. They kept records of every mission carried out in their name, so a quick search would show that he and Beatrice were legitimate.
He dialed the frequency and waited f
or the connection to patch through. It took quite a long time due to the distance, which made him grimace and miss the high-speed automatic connections that most ships had by now.
“You have reached Peace Federation,” came the voice, in the invented business language that was a standard constant between different planets. A simple language, even children could learn it. “State your name, qualifications, vessel identification, and location, followed by your need.”
Jax gritted his teeth but obliged. “Jax of the Ula tribe and Beatrice Noble of…America?” Close enough. “I am a stage 17 Federation warrior. Beatrice is a shipper for Shipway United, vessel number 729. Location is at the Emptiness Boundary, quadrant 1, the Path Of Nothing.” Americans had such stupid names for things, honestly. “We are currently…”
The voice interrupted him. “Got it, Jax. All your information checks out. Your progress is right on schedule for the assigned mission. Is this a status update only?”
“No!” he shouted, frustrated. Beatrice shot him a glare and he quickly grabbed hold f his temper before he started producing static. “Something is wrong with our engine. It’s completely overloaded somehow, all of a sudden. This is an emergency broadcast to let you know that we may be crashing on a nearby planet. We still have the supplies on us.”
The understanding on the other side of the line was stifling in its intensity. Then, the speaker came back to their senses. “Got it. Please send us another broadcast when you have landed. I will alert the higher-ups. If we do not hear back from you within 12 hours time, normal functions will be interrupted to send a high-speed vessel in your direction to pick up where you left off.”
“Thank you,” he said, and clicked off.
Beatrice tugged at his shoulder for his attention. “I found one. It has a breathable atmosphere and a rough surface. It’s…it’s going to be hard, Jax.”
“Let’s not think about it,” he said, his voice wavering up and down with the motion of the ship. “Let’s just go for it.”
“Sit down,” she commanded.
He did as he was told, and buckled in.
Like the expert pilot she was, a change seemed to come over her as she went into command mode. Gripping the wheel as it came out, she also lowered the landing gear immediately and went into a slow, swooping dive that saw them turning sharply to the right. He saw the planet on her observation screen, dark and hardly lit by the light of the distant sun. It was covered in mountain ranges and he winced, knowing how rough the landing was actually going to be.
But, I trust in her. I trust her to do her best.
The ship was rocked by turbulence now as well as disturbances from the engine. The ship was filled abruptly with a screeching whine and then a resounding boom rippled the floor as the engine gave in completely to whatever was wrong with it. Jax winced as he felt heat begin to rise beneath his feet, and the ship’s interior began to tilt forward. Boxes slid forward, jostled out into the hallway and spilling into the cockpit. The planet suddenly seemed as though it was getting closer at a much faster, extremely alarming rate. There was an abrupt difference of pressure as they hit the atmosphere, and the ship began to spin.
Once more, Jax went sprawling. This time, he landed in a mess of boxes, which fell over and covered him. They weren’t heavy enough to hurt, but it was impossible to try and struggle his way out of them when they just kept shifting around him and piling up even further.
The ship spun some more but he couldn’t tell if Bea was righting their direction or if she could even manage to do anything at all right now. His head spun as the ship did, and he was distinctly aware of smudging his blood all over the place, and of a great heat pouring in from the other side of the wall as the friction of their descent began to grow.
If a fire broke out…
Then, everything came to stop in a jarring halt. The sound was hellish, a roar of breaking metal and shattering glass. It was like thunder, chaining on and on and on. Jax’s mind blanked out. For a minute, he ceased to exist. The crash was torn away from him, a short length of time where he registered nothing at all but darkness. If the little ship bounced, or spun, or simply disintegrated upon contact, he had no idea. He had no idea what to make of the different motions he felt, each of them as startling as the last.
And when it was over, he lay on his back, smashed up against the remnants of a wall with a number of heavier things piled upon him than simply medical supply boxes. Groaning, his entire body sore from the top of his head all the way down to his wrenched little toe, Jax tried to move a little. The attempt left him hurting even worse than before, but he could tell that it was only on the surface; his bones and internal organs were just fine. Or so it seemed for now, anyway. As painful as he was, there were parts of him that were buzzing and numb from adrenaline.
Taking a deep breath that crackled with electricity, Jax pushed his back hard against the wall and startled to wriggle around. The debris on top of him shifted around quite a bit but he was no closer to being free than before. Gritting his teeth, he kept wiggling and was rewarded when the boxes above his face shifted just enough for him to orient himself. He was looking up at the sky through broken and twisted metal. Whether he was seeing the dark, moonless sky through a wall, the ceiling, or floor, he couldn’t tell.
And then his view of the sky was blotted out by a very familiar face. “Jax?” Beatrice called out, her voice a tense sob. “Jax, are you okay?”
“Beatrice!” he called back loudly, knowing that his voice would be muffled. “I am fine! I can’t move, however. And you? Are you well?”
She let out a shaky laugh. “Oh, I’m fantastic. The ship isn’t, though.”
He nearly went limp from relief, and sighed, letting the weight of all the debris on top of him press him back down again. “Very good. Are you injured at all?”
“Well, I’ve got a ding on my head to match yours now so I might as well give up on my chance of becoming a beauty queen someday.”
He had no idea what that meant, but then her face disappeared from his sight. “Bea?” he said worriedly.
There was no response, but there was a sound of metal scraping and the weight on his legs lifted. That felt much better, and allowed him to press more firmly against the wall to make room for his arms. Together, the two of them managed to shift enough of the rubble for him to finally stand up.
Groaning again, Jax trudged out of the gigantic pile and the first thing he did upon truly being freed was wrap Beatrice in a warm embrace. Her long hair tickled his collarbone, and he thought about how much she had come to mean to him. Only when they finally let go did he look around.
The ship was destroyed, split open like an overripe fruit with boxes spilling all over the place like pulpy flesh. There really was no top or bottom to speak of anymore, as the ship had been dragged quite a bit over the rough ground by its own momentum. A train of broken stone and shrapnel led up to this point, pressed on one side against part of a steep incline. Everywhere he looked, there was only dark stone and nothing more, exactly as Bea had said there would be.
“Well damn,” he whistled, long and low.
Beatrice gave him a funny look, making him realize again what he’d just said. Maybe spending so much time around her really was starting to rub off on him. Once upon a time, the idea would have irritated him but not right this minute, it didn’t. Perhaps later, though he doubted it.
“Well,” she said hesitantly, “what do we do now, guard?”
Jax hesitated, taking stock of the situation again before pointing up high to the tip of the incline the ship had come to a stop against. “Let’s go up there,” he suggested. “We’ll be able to see better.”
I don’t know what we’d be looking for but it’s better than sitting around here in the middle of a wreckage.
It was a half-hour climb, mostly because they were both very stiff and sore, and because Bea had no upper body strength to speak of, but they managed to do it eventually. Luckily the top of the scree was wide and flat en
ough for them to sit upon. Beatrice sat at the edge and dangled her legs over it, which made Jax worry for a moment until he finished inspecting everything. Though the side of the cliff was covered in loose bits of rock and stone –and thrown metal now- the edge didn’t seem to be dangerously weak. Not for someone of her small size, that was. Just to be safe on his own, he sat a little further back.
“How long until reinforcement arrive, do you think?”
Jax ran through some quick mental calculations, but there were just too many variables about what kind of ship they would send and how long it would take to round up a crew large enough to pilot it. He just gave up, in the end. “I’m not sure,” he finally admitted. “Certainly not nearly as long as it took us to get out here but other than that, I can’t say.”
