Adrift Collection

by T. J. Land

  Of course, taking Rick seriously had been made easier by the fact that the intervening half decade had prettied him up some. His shoulders had broadened, and the last of the puppy fat had melted away, leaving behind a cheeky elfin face with big, liquid brown eyes. If it wasn’t for the god-awful fucking haircut and a pronounced tendency to fidget, he’d have been a walking wet dream.

  “About what?” Zachery asked.

  “Er…about…stuff. Private stuff. Um. I spoke t-to Thomas earlier, and now I wanted to speak to you too, and…”

  “Mm?” Zachery said, half listening as he admired the curve of Rick’s ass. Not that he wasn’t interested in what the kid had to say; Rick was fun to talk to, most of the time. Right then, though, Zachery’s lizard brain had higher priorities.

  “Could we maybe go somewhere? Somewhere private, where we can talk about…about private things?” Rick squeaked, like he was about to throw up with nervousness.

  Shark-like, Zachery smiled.

  Three minutes later, he had Rick pressing his pretty elf face into the bark of one of the huge trees, his legs spread wide open.

  “This your first time taking it in the ass, right?” Zachery asked.

  “Uh… Uh-huh…”

  Smirking, Zachery thrust in again, and Rick whimpered. “Thought so. You know, shrimp, I bet Thomas and the captain would be pissed if they saw me doing this to you. They probably wanted your virgin ass all to themselves. Thomas would have wanted to have you on a bed of rose petals, with lube and oysters and all that crap. ’Cause he thinks you’re a delicate flower, and he’s got a thing about being a gentleman. Me? I’m no gentleman at all.”

  Rick gave a sharp cry as Zachery took hold of his cock.

  “Keep it down, stupid. Wouldn’t want the captain to come over here and see what a fucking whore you are, would we?”

  Obediently, Rick bit down on his sleeve. Very nice, that instant compliance. Very gratifying.

  “Good boy,” Zachery purred and picked up the pace. There was almost two feet of difference in height between them, and in order to get Rick where he wanted him, he had to wrap an arm around the kid’s middle and all but haul him off his feet. Judging by the way he mewled, being manhandled wasn’t something Rick objected to.

  He actually managed to stay quiet when he came. Zachery was relieved and kind of miffed.

  “Next time, puppy, I’m going to make you scream my name so hard you’ll lose your voice,” he told him, biting on his earlobe.

  Eyes twinkling—fuck, he was so pretty—Rick said, “Challenge accepted.”

  Both their smiles disappeared when they heard Thomas shout, “Where’s the captain gone?”

  After tidying up as quickly as possible, they emerged to see Thomas standing in the centre of their makeshift camp, a worried look on his face. Well, more worried than usual, at any rate. So far as Zachery could tell, Thomas was always worried about something.

  “Has anyone seen him?” Thomas said as the others looked around in confusion.

  A chill came over Zachery as he realized he hadn’t heard the captain’s voice for at least half an hour. Scanning the surrounding terrain, he couldn’t see much for the bossy bitch to hide behind. Apart from the mountain, the landscape was more or less flat in every direction. As the others began to call the captain’s name, Zachery assembled a list of likeliest options. The captain was a big man, but the grass was tall, and if he was lying down in it (for whatever horrible reason), they’d have a hard time spotting him. Or he could have gone up the mountain slope, but it was sheer, and why would he set off alone without telling them?

  “Who saw him last?” Thomas said.

  “I did,” Antoine called. “Twenty minutes ago, or thereabouts. He was over by that pile of rocks.”

  Zachery made his way to the sun-bleached boulders Antoine was pointing at. They sat in another patch of tall grass, but he saw no sign of the captain’s boots having trampled it underfoot. As he made his way slowly around the rocks, he spotted two red things about the size of sunflower seeds lying in the dirt.

  “What’re these?” Zachery muttered to himself, bending down to retrieve them.

  All of a sudden, Antoine was there, his skinny hand darting down with wasp-like speed, plucking both red dots from the ground. “Those are headache pills. The captain carries them around everywhere. He gets migraines.”

  “Really?” Zachery said, observing the clandestine way Antoine slid both of them into one of the pouches on his suit. “First I’ve heard of it.”

  “Why would he tell you?” Antoine said in his best asshole voice, looking around. “The grass appears to be untrampled. If he was attacked by something, I would have expected to see signs of a struggle.”

  “Have you tried contacting him on his comm?”

  “Of course, you fool, that was the first thing I did,” Antoine snapped.

  Zachery felt his hackles rising, but kept his temper in check. More important things to focus on.

  They circled the boulders three more times, while the others spread out, moving into the grass. After a full two hours of searching, they’d ascertained that he wasn’t lying out of sight anywhere within twenty minutes walking time from their camp.

  “I contacted the ship. They haven’t seen him,” Khali said.

  “There’s no way the captain would leave us alone out here voluntarily,” Thomas said. “Not a chance in hell. Something’s happened to him.”

  “You mean like aliens?” said Rick, eyes wide.

  “Ain’t nothing around here big enough to take him down and drag him off. Besides, we’d have heard something,” Irene retorted.

  Looking upward, Thomas said, “Maybe not. The wind’s picked up. If a big flying thing came at him from overhead and picked him up, he could have been out of earshot before he could shout for help.”

  “Supremely unlikely,” Antoine replied. “In two months of painstaking orbital observation, we have seen no sign that any such life forms exist on this planet.”

  “Unless it’s got a way of hiding from our equipment,” said Khali.

  “There’s another option,” said Zachery, speaking up for the first time in two hours. “One of us did it.”

  Khali was the first to break the silence. “The fuck, Zachery?”

  “There aren’t many other options that make sense to me. There’s no corpse, no blood, no sign of a fight, none of us heard anything. So something took him out quickly, silently, and then either kidnapped him or incinerated his body, all in the space of twenty minutes. Whatever did that would need to be damn smart. But there’s no intelligent life on this planet; we spent months making sure of that. No intelligent life, apart from us.”

  “Why the hell would any of us want to hurt the captain?” Thomas asked, gaping at him.

  “Interesting question, isn’t it? I suppose, if we were playing detectives, we’d first have to work out which one of us had the most to gain.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” spat Antoine.

  “Um, guys?” said Rick, moving to defuse the situation. “Occam’s razor, yeah? Maybe he had a heart attack, and he’s lying unconscious in a place we haven’t looked yet. I mean, he is kind of old.”

  Zachery had been trying to block out that possibility for two hours. Sure, he knew the bossy old bitch was, in fact, old. But Zachery couldn’t picture him getting sick, or dying. The captain was like Stonehenge—simultaneously timeworn and ageless. You never imagined one day you’d turn around and it would be gone.

  For the first time, Zachery was afraid.

  “We’ve looked everywhere, though,” muttered Thomas, who obviously didn’t like contemplating the captain’s mortality any more than Zachery did.

  “Then we’ll look again,” said Antoine, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Here’s what we do. Khali, contact the ship again and tell Cecelia to bring it here. We’ll have an easier time searching from the air. Meanwhile, we’ll divide into teams. Zachery, Rick, you two continue to search the grass. Thomas, Mehtab,
you search the base of the mountain. Echo and I will go up the slope. We will check in every three minutes. If any of you see or hear anything, press the alarm on your suit belt. Understood?”

  All at once, he’s in charge, thought Zachery. He said, “Ant, Echo’s the worst climber we’ve got. Why should he go up the mountain with you?”

  Glaring, Antoine said, “Echo is observant and has the best eyesight.”

  “Yeah, but I think—”

  “I do not care what you think,” Antoine hissed. “Do as you’re told. We’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

  Zachery raised himself to his full height and balled his fists, wanting, if nothing else, to intimidate the prissy fucker.

  It didn’t work. Of course, it didn’t; Antoine appeared to be as tough and resilient as a ballerina, but he went toe-to-toe with the captain on a regular basis. His self-preservation instincts worked about as well as The Prayer’s plumbing.

  “Do as you’re told,” he repeated coldly.

  Rick tugged at Zachery’s sleeve and whispered in his ear, “We don’t have time for this shit, man.”

  Reluctantly, he conceded that the pipsqueak was right, and without another word, he set off to scour the grass again.

  After an hour, worry gave way to dread. After three more, dread gave way to hatred for whoever or whatever had done this to them. By the time the sun began to set, a deep bleakness had begun to spread through Zachery’s heart. The Prayer arrived, and they turned on the lights, continuing to search as night drew in. They looked up the mountain. They looked down the mountain. They found several new types of nocturnal fauna, but nothing that seemed interested in posing a threat to them. Everything they stumbled upon slithered or scuttled out of their way as fast as it could.

  As dawn broke the following morning, Antoine ordered them all back to the ship.

  “We’re not leaving him!” Thomas snarled. He looked like shit, like the rest of them, huge bags under his eyes and his shoulders stooped with exhaustion.

  “No, we’re not,” Antoine said. “We’ve now inspected every possible inch of ground he could have reached unaided within the twenty minutes it took us to realize he’d disappeared. We’ve found no hidden pitfalls or crannies into which he could have fallen. We’re not achieving anything. The one remaining option is that an unknown entity ate or abducted him and carried him away at speed. We don’t know where they took him, or why. If we’re going to have any hope of finding him, we need to devise a plan. We’re going back to the ship, we’re going to eat, we’re going to rest, and then we will recommence searching with a proper strategy.”

  “He’s right, Thomas,” sighed Irene. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but…”

  “Does anyone else think this is all a bit too convenient?” Zachery said.

  Khali scowled at him. “Fuck are you taking about, Halberstam?”

  Zachery pointed a finger at Antoine, whose posture had become rigid. “Think about it. We’re fine, totally fine, for four years. Then he decides we should land on one of his precious worlds. The captain doesn’t want to, but Antoine bullies him into it. We land, the captain goes missing, and suddenly he’s throwing around orders. I said it once, and I’ll say it again; the most likely culprit is one of…”

  “Jesus Christ, Zach!” Thomas exploded. “You can’t start accusing…”

  Whatever he said next, Zachery didn’t hear it. Awful, awful pain exploded across his chest from out of nowhere, shaking him to his core before throwing him back onto his ass.

  As he lay on the ground, groaning, he became aware of a shadow stretching over him. Antoine. Antoine, with his stun gun. The next second, Zachery’s view was obscured as Antoine’s boot planted itself in his face.

  “Allow me to define the term ‘second-in-command’ for you, Mister Halberstam,” Antoine said, in the same calm, amiable voice that the captain used when he was angry beyond all reason.

  To Zachery’s relief—because ow, fuck, his chest felt like it was on fire, and the edge of Antoine’s boot was digging into his eye socket—Echo appeared at their first officer’s side. He didn’t do anything but stand there, and when Antoine looked his way he gave a respectful nod and made a dismissive gesture in Zachery’s direction. No translation needed… He’s not worth it.

  Grunting in agreement, Antoine withdrew his boot. Turning on his heel, he started back towards the ship, and the rest of them followed in his wake.

  All except Rick, who hung back and crouched down next to Zachery. “Hey, man, are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay. Nothing’s okay,” Zachery said, getting to his feet. Rick offered his shoulder, and he accepted. “Shit. How did this happen? Everything was looking up for once.”

  Chapter Five

  He dreamed.

  In his dream, he was in a warm room, and someone beautiful was sucking his cock. He couldn’t make out their features, nor their hair color, but somehow he knew they were lovely.

  He was aware, on some level, that none of it was real. It had been so long since he’d had an excellent blowjob, though. Thomas preferred to use his skillful hands; Rick, bless his heart, was enthusiastic, but he lacked artistry; Zachery had some peculiar idea that any sex he had that didn’t involve penetrating his partner would endanger his masculinity; and Echo was averse to germs and would, the captain suspected, approach the task as he would any other mildly objectionable chore. And while the captain’s tastes were nigh-infinite in scope, he had never in his life entertained the prospect of having any kind of sex that his partner didn’t enjoy as much as he did.

  Blowjobs had always had a special place in his heart—the intimacy and trust implied by having oneself vulnerable to one’s lover’s teeth. He had more often been the giver than the receiver, not least because he was happiest on his knees. But this… Had he ever known anything like this? His phantom lover’s technique was faultless. They set a steady but unhurried rhythm, drawing back to lap at his crown before taking him all the way to the hilt—a notable feat in and of itself, as the dimensions of his cock proved too great a challenge for most men to overcome.

  “Mm,” he murmured approvingly.

  They gently cupped his scrotum, and he bit his lip. Wanting to show his appreciation without breaking the tranquil silence, he reached down to run his fingers through his mysterious partner’s hair. When he did, he found that it was like touching smoke.

  The dream was falling apart. The sweet, wet comfort of the mouth tight around him was interrupted by a severe ache in his head. With extreme reluctance, he woke up.

  The warm, clean room was now a warm, damp cavern. For a moment, he didn’t understand how he was able to see anything, before realizing that his suit had automatically activated the lights on his gloves and his torso, shining three beams into the darkness. The memory of how he had arrived here returned to him—a grasping hand and a long fall down a slippery incline. He was underground, then. How long had he been unconscious? Oh, good God. The suit indicated that it had been at least six hours. He tried to stand, but when he did, the world spun dizzily around him, forcing him to sit back down. Inspection revealed a large welt on his forehead. To make matters worse, his comm wasn’t working, damaged by the fall.

  Where was his crew? Were they searching for him? He was about to begin calling for help, when it occurred to him that he was unarmed and trapped in hitherto unexplored territory. They had some notion of what lived in this planet’s oceans, and what roamed her plains, but they’d no idea at all of what lived beneath her surface. Perhaps it would be advisable to remain silent until he had a better idea of where he was.

  Turning his attention to the cavern ceiling, he tried to determine if he could climb back up. While he could see the point at which he’d entered the cavern—a circular opening through which a weak beam of sunlight shone—it was ten metres up. The rock face was too slimy for him to climb, even if he hadn’t been suffering back pain and a head injury.

  As the captain was reviewing his options, so
mething in his peripheral vision moved. He remained motionless, although the hair rose on the back of his neck. By inches, he turned his head toward the source of the movement.

  There, sitting against the cavern wall adjacent to his current position, was a man.

  He was incredibly tall, taller than Zachery, with arms large enough to snap the captain in two. He was naked, bereft of a stitch of clothing, and green—his skin, his eyes, his thick, mane-like hair, all a shade reminiscent of algae. Moreover, the captain was not so afraid that he failed to notice that his new companion was good-looking.

  He was contemplating the captain with an air of mild curiosity.

  “Good morning,” said the captain, in a neutral voice. “Or afternoon, as the case may be.”

  The green man didn’t move or speak. After a while, the captain cleared his throat and said, “You’ll forgive me if I take it for granted that you aren’t real.”

  In a deep, booming voice that echoed off the cavern walls, the man replied, “Not real? Why?”

  Concealing his surprise, the captain said, “Because if you were real, you would be an alien. I am disinclined to believe that any aliens we encounter in this galaxy would look exactly like we do and speak English. More to the point, I’m probably concussed, and you’re a likely sort of thing for me to hallucinate.”

  “Hmph. How so?”

  “You’re handsome,” the captain explained. “When people get lost in deserts, they hallucinate oases. In circumstances such as these and knowing myself as I do, I would expect my hallucinations to take the form of handsome men.”

  “Why is that?”

  A curious feature of a hallucination, that it should speak solely in questions. With some impatience, the captain replied, “Because I like sex. Specifically, sex with handsome men.”

  “You want me,” said the alien, in meditative tones. It looked down at its body, running a hand down its chest towards a thick nest of hair and a mouth-watering cock. Then, abruptly, it returned its attention to him. “Do you like my lair, foreigner? You are the first visitor in many years.”