Stowaway (Star Line Express Romance Book 1)

by Alessia Bowman

  The ship does a violent movement, and I slam into the cot. Aymee, hanging on to the door handle for all she’s worth, yells out as she’s thrown from side to side.

  “Someone will come for us,” Aymee says after the lurching subsides. She’s ever the lying optimist. “They have to come. Don’t they? It must be in the procedures somewhere.”

  “It must be,” I say, “but hardly anyone knows we’re here, and the few who do are too visible to leave their posts.”

  “Maybe the lock will disengage,” Aymee says, still vainly tugging on the door, “because, you know, there must be something built in, in case of emergency—and this is certainly an emergency.”

  I laugh, because it’s kind of wonderful that Aymee Desryx is so hopeful in this completely hopeless situation.

  “Stop laughing!” she says over the din, over her persistent but useless efforts at opening the door.

  But I can’t stop laughing.

  And, anyway, in a flash of buried memory, I realize that I know something that master criminal Aymee Desryx doesn’t know.

  I know how to get out of here.

  Chapter 18

  Aymee

  This door will not budge. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop working on it. Not while I’m still alive.

  But what kind of a ship is the Centreale that even when everyone is supposed to abandon ship the cell door doesn’t open? Doesn’t automatically open?

  “Open, you fucking door!” I’m shouting at the door, as though that will help. The hellishly loud abandon ship sirens won’t stop, and the Big World Terran I’m locked up here with is laughing.

  “Stop laughing! Stop it!” Now I pound on the door. Maybe someone will hear me and let us out. There must be someone left in this part of the ship. “We’re trapped in here!”

  First Officer Niklas Arca keeps laughing. And when I look back at him, not only is he laughing, but he looks positively relaxed.

  I let go of the door and confront him. “Don’t you know we’re going to die in here?”

  “Aymee,” he says, still laughing and smiling that devastating, gorgeous smile. “We are probably going to die. But we’re not going to do it in here.”

  He pulls the cot away from the wall and gets down on his hands and knees. As I crouch down to see what he’s doing, I see our salvation as he unhinges a panel at the base of the wall.

  Then I start laughing too. Not just because Niklas’s laughter is infectious, but because we’re free! Except . . .

  “You mean we could’ve gotten out of here all along?”

  “I have to concentrate,” he says, shooing me away—and still laughing.

  With both hands, I push hard against his solid upper arm, although this doesn’t even budge him.

  “You mean we could’ve gotten out of here all along?”

  I can’t think of anything else to say. The sirens are drowning out my thoughts as well as my words. They’ve taken away my ability to reason.

  “Let me focus,” he says as he holds out his hand and grabs one of mine with it. He squeezes it, like we’re friends or lovers or like I imagine a life mate would do. Although that’s imagination only, since I’ll never have a life mate, having turned down my match. And of course having then stowed away on the Centreale. Also, to top off my roster of ill-considered decisions, being about to die here on the ship the only male I’ll ever have sex with has sabotaged.

  Well, maybe he has. Now I’m not so sure. If I could only think, but the sirens are changing now, and they sound, if anything, worse than they did before.

  “That’s the final call,” Niklas says. I have to read his lips since this new set of sirens is so unbearably loud that I wouldn’t be able to hear him if his mouth were against my ear.

  He lets go of my hand and goes back to work. I go to work trying to block out the screeching sounds of the final call siren. But it’s impossible, so I resume my efforts at the door, alternately pounding on it and pulling, then pushing, then pulling it. Nothing.

  “Got it!” First Officer Niklas Arca says, and a second later, the sirens stop.

  Niklas

  “Did you do that?” she says, waving her hands in the air to indicate the now-absent sirens.

  My ears are ringing so hard that I look around to make sure Aymee doesn’t have some kind of a Chorynean torture instrument that she’s holding up next to my head. But it’s just the aftermath of the sirens, and it’s like no known experience. And especially like no experience I’d ever like to experience again.

  Although in the case of right now, again might include only another hour or two. Before the end.

  “Did you?” she says.

  “Come on,” I say. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Stop shouting!” she says, shouting. “You don’t have to anymore.”

  “Neither do you,” I say in what I assume to be a whisper, but I can’t hear myself.

  “What?”

  “Come on,” I say again. “Let’s go.”

  “You did do that, didn’t you?” she says as we crawl through the opening in the panel.

  Just because Arca Shipbuilding no longer has the contract for Star Line Express doesn’t mean it always didn’t have it.

  Although I never actually saw these panels being installed. They’re in all locked chambers, or they’re supposed to be in all locked chambers, including storage compartments, but you can’t necessarily trust your work crews to do everything they’re supposed to. Luckily for me, and for Aymee, this particular crew did do as they were instructed.

  By Rej.

  Which is why it took me so long to remember that they were supposed to be here. This is the kind of thing that Rej was always in charge of. I’d thank him for doing such a good job, but he’s light-years away and, besides that, I despise him.

  “We have to stop,” Aymee says as she crawls up ahead of me.

  “We can’t stop,” I say. “Unless you want to suffocate.”

  “I have a cramp in my thigh,” she says, grasping her thigh to, I suppose, prove that she does have this invented cramp.

  “Keep going,” I say, and she keeps going.

  Rej might’ve been in charge of the panels in the locked chambers, but, fortunately for me, I did most of the redesign work on these ducts. So I know exactly where we are.

  “How much longer?” Aymee says. She’s crawling much faster now. I guess her pretend cramp has vanished.

  “We’re almost there,” I say.

  “Where is that?” she says, her voice swallowed up in the narrow passageway.

  “Figure it out,” I say. “There’s only one place we could possibly go.”

  “Oh,” she says. She’s kind of limping, if it’s possible to limp while crawling, but I’m low on sympathy right now, so I ignore her.

  The ship starts roiling about again, Aymee is holding her thigh again, and I can think of only two things.

  First, that I’m about to spend the last few minutes of my fucked-up life here in the ductwork of the Centreale with only the ship’s saboteur for company.

  The other thing I’m thinking is that even if Aymee Desryx is the ship’s saboteur, which she must be—who else could it be?—I have a terrible feeling that I’ve fallen in love with her.

  Chapter 19

  Aymee

  Is this what happens when you’ve had sex? Your thigh starts cramping up and you can barely move? Yet I crawl onward. We must be going to the engine room. Or else to the escape raft he’s got hidden away somewhere. One that no one else would be using.

  I’m sweating. It’s not even warm in here, much less hot, but I guess this is the sweat of outright fear. I run down the list of what I’m afraid of:

  (1) I’m afraid of dying in this ductwork. Okay. I’m afraid of dying. Doesn’t seem like a good thing to be doing. Well, someday, maybe. But not today. Not for years’ worth of days.

  (2) I’m afraid we’ll get to the engine room and I still won’t know what to do to fix the equatorial stabilizatio
n system. Because I couldn’t figure it out before. And I’ve never seen anything like it anyway. It’s old. And I haven’t come up with any new ideas about it. No. I was too busy in bed with the Big World Terran.

  (3) I’m afraid that First Officer Niklas Arca does have an escape raft hidden away somewhere and that he’s going to use it and leave me here. Why wouldn’t he? Would I do the same to him? Maybe I would. Especially if I knew he’d destroyed my ship. Even though I haven’t destroyed the Centreale. But he doesn’t think that.

  (4) I’m afraid that I’ve spent too much time with the Centreale’s first officer and that I almost like him now. Which I should not.

  (5) I’m afraid that if I had it to do all over again, I’d stay on Choryn, mate with Lasson Birtak, and, and, and . . . and what? Go through an entire lifetime never knowing the exquisite pleasure I just experienced? Never knowing this terrible-wonderful sensation that I can’t shake off?

  “Move,” says Arca, just behind me. “We’re almost there.”

  I move faster. The cramp has subsided somewhat. I clear my mind. That should work. Stop thinking, I tell myself. Then maybe that mysterious idea machine hidden deep inside me will be able to come up with the right solution. The one that’ll save my life. And the ship’s life.

  And Niklas Arca’s life.

  “Stop,” he says.

  I stop.

  He wedges himself past me, and I tell myself not to enjoy the physical contact. Yet I enjoy it anyway. Hell, I’m probably going to die soon. I might as well enjoy whatever time I’ve got left. In whatever small way I can.

  Arca’s pushed out another panel, and I remember that I’m furious at him for not having done this earlier. For having kept us locked in that cell when we could’ve gotten out. Although then I wouldn’t’ve enjoyed my once-in-a-lifetime sex.

  “I didn’t think it was this high up,” he says. I guess he’s talking to me.

  I wiggle past him and look out, then down. We are in the engine room, except we’re near the ceiling—and I don’t see a ladder.

  “Too bad about the ship’s gravity,” I say, thinking I could just float down into the room. Except there’s very little floating here on the Centreale. It’s a cargo ship, and it’s built to keep things pinned down, including its crew.

  Niklas and I are face-to-face. His face is a bit stubbly, and it’s all I can do not to reach out and touch it. It’s like he’s exuding some kind of a magnetic force and I can’t resist. But I do resist.

  “What if I lower you down?” he says. He looks down, then looks back at me.

  “What if I lower you down?” I say. “You’re much taller and have a better chance of reaching the floor in one piece.”

  “The deck,” he says, picking a very poor time to start teaching me about ship nomenclature.

  “The deck,” I say.

  “I’m going to lower you down,” he says. “The length of my arms will make up for your lack of height.”

  “I don’t lack height,” I say.

  “Come on,” he says. “We don’t have any time to waste.”

  The ship convulses just then, and I realize that the EQSS is all but done for.

  “We hardly have any time at all,” I say. “Let’s do it.”

  I slink up across his body and grab hold of his big, strong hand.

  “Take a deep breath,” he says.

  “Why’s that?” But I take a deep breath anyway.

  “To distract you,” he says as he unceremoniously lowers me into the engine room, whose deck is much farther away from my feet than I’d estimated when I’d taken a look.

  “Don’t let go!” I say as he lets go. I fall the rest of the way down, crashing to a halt just in front of the EQSS array. I get up, check that all my major parts are in working order—they are—and get to it.

  Okay, I say to myself. Think. Fix this sucker.

  My mind scrambles through everything I know about equatorial stabilization. It’s a short scramble, because I took only a very brief course in it.

  I start looking over everything, staring at the controls, going underneath them to see how the connections are arranged.

  Damn. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s an antique. It’s got wires, for one thing. I didn’t think they had wires anymore. Not for a couple of millennia, at least. Maybe there’s a secret level underneath all these machines where there are fifty strong men rowing while a fifty-first man sits in front, facing them, calling out the cadence. I wouldn’t put it past the Centreale.

  But besides the now constantly moving ship and the relic that’s supposed to be taking care of its stability, something is terribly wrong.

  I have my right hand wrapped around a set of wires that I think could be key in all this—they’ve obviously been fucked with and several are cut at odd angles—but I just feel weird. More weird than I should feel, as someone facing their doom would feel.

  Something is off. Something feels utterly wrong. And it’s not just these wires. Or my imminent demise.

  I stare at the wires, trying to make a decision based on just enough knowledge to get us killed.

  Us.

  Then I realize what it is that’s wrong. I’m alone here! Big World Lover Boy is probably on his way back to his secret escape raft. He dropped me into the depths of the engine room and then went on his merry way. Well, merry for him. Not exactly merry for me.

  Because even if I could possibly fix the EQSS, which is doubtful, if I’m left alone on this ship, I’ll have to figure out how to work it to, you know, get to a safe port.

  Hell, hell, hell . . .

  Okay, I have no time to think these things.

  I let go of the wires and stand up to stare at the array again. Fear does wondrous things to a cramp in your thigh. Mine has disappeared. If it would only do wondrous things to my ability to fix the equatorial stabilizer . . .

  I crouch back down and pull on the wires again. Hopeless. Still clutching the wires, I stand back up.

  “Haven’t you fixed it yet?” says a familiar voice.

  Niklas

  “No!” she says. “I haven’t fixed it yet. And where have you been?”

  “I’ve been crawling through the ducts. Thank you for asking.” I straighten up and work the kinks out of my back. Those ducts are not made for someone my size.

  “You mean there’s another way into the engine room?”

  “There is,” I say. “I’d forgotten about it.”

  “But then you remembered.” She’s smirking.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “After you dropped me.” Now she’s fuming a bit along with the smirk.

  “Exactly.”

  “The hell with you,” she says, but the fuming smirk has turned into a smile.

  “Glad I’m here?” I can’t believe I’m making small talk while the clock on our lives is ticking down.

  “I’d be a helluva lot gladder if you knew how to fix the EQSS,” she says.

  “I don’t,” I say. “That’s your area.”

  “Even though you’re the one who fucked it up,” she says. But she’s still smiling. I think it’s possible she’s happy I’m here. And that she doesn’t really think I did it.

  “I didn’t,” I say. “You did.”

  “No, actually, I did,” says Arbin Cole, apparently fully recovered from his bout with near-death. My attention has been on Aymee and I failed to see the ship’s engineer come into the engine room the regular way, through the entrance portal.

  “Cole,” I say. “What brings you here?”

  “Arca,” he says. “I might ask you the same question. Shouldn’t you be with the others on a raft about now?”

  “Shouldn’t you be?”

  “Ah, ah, ah, Nik. I asked first.”

  I think about the seven thousand different ways I could overcome this puny earthling and end this conversation now before I get even more furious, then I realize we need him to fix what he’s tampered with.

  I told Zav he shouldn’t’ve
hired this weaselly creep. But we were in a bind, a big shipment that meant a new, lucrative client hanging in the balance, and the engineer had gone off with his assistant—they’d fallen in love—and they were basking on one of the moons of the Limar System.

  “The Chorynean and I were detained,” I say, not wanting to admit to this lowlife that we were locked up in the holding cell.

  “The Chorynean?” Aymee says, like we’re having a lovers’ quarrel when what we’re really doing is playing a deadly game with the one person who has the information that can save us.

  “A stroke of luck that we have this one on the ship,” Cole says, pointing to Aymee. “Since everyone was sure she was the culprit. The Choryneans being such notorious crooks.”

  “Except you’re the culprit,” I say.

  “Yes,” Arbin Cole says, rubbing his neck, like he’s tiring of this conversation. Or like he’s contemplating what his next move is, since no doubt he wasn’t expecting us.

  “Fix the damned thing already,” I say.

  “In a few moments,” he says, reaching behind him and sighing. “After I’ve eliminated the two of you.”

  Chapter 20

  Aymee

  This sickening little earthling—he must be an earthling, judging by his steely eyes and his receding hairline—is now pointing a rather modern-looking weapon at first Niklas, then me, going back and forth, like he can’t figure out who to kill first.

  “That’s not necessary, Cole,” Niklas says, staring down at the real saboteur. If I were Arbin Cole, I’d shoot Niklas first, since he’s the biggest threat. But Cole seems to want to brag first. Well, earthlings are well-known for their unstoppable egos and equally unstoppable need to explain themselves.

  I stare around me as inconspicuously as I can. There must be something here that I could throw at him. Or electrocute him with.

  But there’s nothing.

  “You don’t need to do that, Cole,” Niklas says. “We’ll never tell, will we?” He looks at me.

  “Never,” I say.