Adrift Collection

by T. J. Land

  He cleared his throat. “Ant, you know I’m sleeping with the captain, right?”

  “I am aware.”

  “And also Thomas and Rick.”

  He’d hoped that that might provoke a flicker of surprise—that the three of them were the captain’s boys was common knowledge aboard The Prayer by now, but Antoine was so wrapped up in himself he might not have heard. Nope, Prissyboots didn’t bat an eyelid.

  “I know that too. Is there a point to this?” asked Antoine, clearly only half listening as he scanned their surroundings.

  Ignoring me. As usual. The irritation, the tightening across his chest—they were familiar feelings, for all that he’d never consciously registered them before. Hmm. How long, exactly, had he been harbouring a crush on Antoine?

  Wanting nothing more than to provoke a reaction, Zachery said, “Well, as you ask, I was wondering if you’d like to join in some time. The captain’s bed’s not that big, but you’re a string bean; we could squeeze you in.”

  Antoine’s high, piping laughter temporarily drowned out the siren.

  “That…that is never going to happen,” he said, gasping for breath. “No. Definitely not. Good grief.”

  Okay, that stung. Getting rejected was one thing, but did he have to be such a bitch about it?

  “Right. Cool,” said Zachery, staring at the floor.

  Antoine’s giggles slowly trickled away. “Mister Halberstam, I wasn’t trying to be insulting.”

  “S’okay, you don’t have to explain yourself. I’m a fucking adult.”

  Sighing, Antoine said, “No, I apologise. I wasn’t laughing at you. The truth is that I don’t have sex, ever.”

  He said it so casually, as though he was telling Zachery that he was a vegan or allergic to wheat.

  “Like I said, you don’t have to explain yourself,” said Zachery. Then, still sore, he added, “You don’t have to insult my intelligence, either. Even if I’m not a genius like you, I do know how basic biology works. Sex is like pissing. Everyone does it. Don’t make up dumb excuses, man; if you’re not into me, that’s cool.”

  Antoine gave him a look then, like…like he was a cockroach, or something. He didn’t say another word, though, and they kept walking in silence.

  They looked for the room they’d been trapped in for another ten minutes and didn’t find it. It was bizarre. They’d retraced their steps three times, even timed themselves. The damned thing wasn’t there anymore.

  “I’m spooked,” said Zachery.

  Antoine’s suit came equipped with a portable first aid kit. Opening it, he took out a pair of scissors. “Bend down for me, Mister Halberstam.”

  He snipped off a thick lock of Zachery’s dark hair, and then snipped a few strands off that and placed them on the floor. He did the same thing after five paces.

  Bread crumbs. Smart, thought Zachery.

  Had he been telling the truth about never having sex? No way. Antoine was in his mid-thirties. No normal, healthy man got to that age without dipping his dick in someone. Especially not when they were as sexy as First Officer Prissyboots. Unless… ah. Unless there was a problem. Unless he’d been in an accident or got a disease that had left his dick all messed up. That would explain why he was so uptight.

  I bet that’s it. He’s too ashamed of his body to let anyone see him naked.

  Geez, now Zachery felt sorry for him. It was a cruel fucking irony that a man with a face like Antoine’s couldn’t reap any benefits from it.

  But hey, Zachery was an open-minded guy. He hadn’t been lying to Rick; his first boyfriend had had one eye and two fingers missing, courtesy, in fact, of a knife fight with Zachery himself. Zachery could deal with whatever Antoine had down his pants. If he could only find a polite, tactful way of letting Antoine know that…

  “Hey, Ant, listen. Even though we haven’t always seen eye to eye, please be aware that I am totally down for giving your poor, mangled dick all the love and affection it deserves. Whatever it looks like, I’m sure the rest of you makes up for it.”

  Nah. This was Antoine he was dealing with. He needed to be classy.

  “Putain!” Antoine yelled. He’d been leaving snippets of hair for the last ten minutes as they’d turned down corridor after corridor, and now, in front of them, were the very first few strands he’d dropped. “We’re going in fucking circles! What is wrong with this building?”

  “It’s a mystery,” said Zachery, his mind now firmly on other things. “Hey, Ant, I didn’t mean to be a jerk earlier. It’s just that, you know, I don’t think you’ve explored all your options. There’s this great quote I memorised in school; can’t remember who said it. ‘Sex is as important as eating or drinking, and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other’.”

  “The Marquis de Sade. He wrote that.”

  “Yeah! That was the guy! Damn, you’re brainy. Anyway, I always thought that was a fucking clever way of putting it. Sex is… I mean, sex is necessary, yeah? Not wanting to have sex with one particular person, that’s fine. Not wanting to have sex at all—that’s not natural. It’s like having anorexia in your balls.”

  Antoine had folded his arms and was staring up at the ceiling. “Mister Halberstam, there is not enough time left before the heat death of the universe for me to explain to you everything that is wrong in that statement, nor do I have the inclination. Let me say this; the Marquis de Sade was a rapist and a child molester. Less monstrous, but still worth noting, is the fact that his philosophy was intellectually bankrupt and his literary skills subpar. If you base your personal beliefs regarding sex on something that man wrote, I suppose it’s not surprising that you’re a criminal.”

  That did it. If you wanted to see Zachery blow his top, there was no faster way than to whip out that particular word. He knew his tendency to pummel the shit out of anyone who called him a criminal was, ultimately, only proving their point. He didn’t give a shit. Right then, all he wanted was to teach First Officer Prissyboots a lesson he wouldn’t forget.

  He forgot all about the fucking stun gun. The fucking stun gun Antoine carried everywhere he went.

  To give Antoine credit, string bean or not, his reflexes were impressive. Zachery was still drawing back the punch when he found the business end of Antoine’s weapon of choice pointed right at his face.

  “Do I have to make you behave again?” Antoine growled.

  Oh. Hell. No.

  In an instant, Zachery’s rage was displaced by incredulity. He kept his eyes on Antoine’s stun gun, while inwardly all he could focus on was his own dick. What the fuck? What the fuck is wrong with you, you stupid piece of meat?

  What disturbed him even more than the way all his blood had started flowing towards his groin was the sudden memory of the captain smacking ass. The feeling that had evoked—he still couldn’t name it—was uncannily similar to the feeling evoked by Antoine’s playing the autocrat.

  “Well, Mister Halberstam?”

  Fuck, he even sounded like Khurshed when he called Zachery that. Old man, you have seriously fucked me up.

  Lowering his fist, Zachery managed to say, “Don’t call me that. That’s bellow the belt, even for you.”

  After a moment, the weapon was withdrawn. “Fine. On the condition that you vow not to vomit up your half-formed opinions on my sexuality in front of me ever again.”

  “Got it. I didn’t mean any offence.” Zachery winced. He sounded like such a pussy. It wasn’t an act, though. He genuinely hadn’t meant to be an asshole. And he wanted, more than anything, to get that expression of contempt off Antoine’s face. “I just think it’s a… It’s a real shame someone who looks like you hasn’t ever had sex. It’s a waste, is what it is. Do you have any idea how many people would kill for a chance at you? You’re fucking beautiful.”

  He cut himself off, blushing.

  The contempt evaporated. “Thank you for the compliment. Now drop it.”

  They might have been
about to have a moment when Zachery noticed something amiss. “Hey—the siren’s stopped.”

  “So it has,” agreed Antoine, cocking an ear. “Strange.”

  The sudden silence was unsettling, and Zachery picked up the DG ring and all the other stuff he’d dropped when drawing back his punch. “Maybe we should get go…”

  Footsteps. Heavy, inhuman, coming from the end of the passage, barely thirty metres away. Zachery knew without turning around that it wasn’t the captain. Judging by Antoine’s horrified expression, he guessed he wasn’t going to like what it was.

  “Zachery,” said Antoine, softly. “Don’t make any sudden movements. It might not have noticed us. Ah—sorry, let me correct that. It has definitely noticed us.”

  Zachery looked, and fuck him sideways if it wasn’t a robot. A real, literal, bona fide robot, humanoid and steel grey, with a big scary gun, heading right their way.

  “Your orders, sir?” he asked Antoine.

  Antoine never got a chance to issue any because that was when it started shooting at them, and they both ran like hell.

  ✩✩✩

  “There you are,” Irene said to Thomas. “Wondered where you’d gone off to.”

  “We heard a noise. Decided to check it out,” said Thomas, who’d always been a lousy liar. “I think it was just the wind.”

  Echo took the rifle and continued target practice while Thomas sprawled back on the grass beside Irene. He was thinking ahead. As they’d been heading back to the facility, Echo had implied—in his inscrutable way—that he’d visit Thomas’s quarters when they got back to the ship. That he’d maybe even spend the night. Thomas wanted to make him dinner. Nothing fancy—he wasn’t much of a cook, nowhere near Echo’s level. He’d learned how to make a passable broccoli soup a few years ago, out of necessity; it was the only way he could force down all the vegetables they had to live on.

  The more he thought about it, the more excited he got. He was a sucker for romantic shit. On Earth, he’d have arranged flowers and wine, neither of which were an option at the moment.

  I could play some music. Jazz. He’d like jazz. And…hmm…

  “You think we’ve got any candles on board?” he asked Irene.

  “Candles? What, for the captain’s cake? He won’t thank you for that, Thomas. Anyway, you’d need a hell of a lot of them. He’s no spring chicken.”

  Thomas blinked. “Cake? What?”

  “Oh shit. Ignore me. I didn’t say anything.”

  “Oh my God. It’s his birthday?”

  “Don’t tell him I told you, Thomas; he’ll hate my guts. I promised I’d keep it a secret.”

  “Why?” asked Thomas, bewildered. “I’m sleeping with the guy, Irene.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “Yeah, I know. I don’t get it either. He doesn’t tell anyone. I only found out ’cause Antoine once told me by accident.”

  “Fucking Antoine?” Thomas squawked. “You’re telling me Antoine, the guy most likely to commit mutiny on any day of the week, knows when the captain’s birthday is? And I don’t?”

  “I am really fucking this up,” Irene sighed.

  “Echo!” Thomas shouted. “You knew about this?”

  It turned out that Echo had not known about it, although on the whole he seemed less perturbed about it than Thomas was.

  “Echo says ‘Maybe he’s embarrassed about his age. Or maybe he doesn’t want a party. Not everyone does’,” Irene translated.

  “Why would he tell Antoine, though? Of all people? I don’t get it.”

  Echo stared questioningly at Irene, who was scratching her knee and avoiding their eyes.

  “Irene?” Thomas pleaded.

  She grunted a stream of German curse words. “Okay, whatever. Antoine’s my second cousin. That’s how I got work on The Prayer; he recommended me to the captain. We’re not close, but we talk now and then, and he once told me that he and the captain go back a long way. He never went into specifics. From what I could make out, I’d guess they hooked up for a while.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Thomas. “That’s why they’re always fighting? A bad break-up?”

  In his head, he made no bones about it. It hurt to learn that after half a year of sleeping together, the man he was in love with hadn’t deemed him worthy of a level of intimacy he’d apparently had with fucking Antoine. Thomas thought he deserved better than that.

  “You’d think he’d have said something,” he grumbled.

  “Hey, don’t take it so hard, Thomas. Antoine might have asked him to keep it a secret. They both like their privacy.”

  Echo squeezed Thomas’s shoulder in agreement.

  “Yeah, well, I’m still going to give him a fucking talking-to when he gets out of there,” said Thomas. He looked at the sun. “Speaking of which, haven’t they been gone a long time?”

  “Good point,” said Irene. “Lemme get in touch.”

  When she tried to contact the captain on the comm, there was no response. She tried again with Antoine and Zachery; same deal.

  “Shit,” Irene hissed. “What do we do?”

  They both looked at Echo.

  “Your orders, sir?” said Thomas.

  ✩✩✩

  “God, this is such a stupid way to die,” Antoine said as they cowered behind a chunk of fallen masonry.

  It was a godsend. Outrunning the robot had worked like a charm, at first; it didn’t move above a walking pace. But then the building had started playing tricks with them again. They’d run into random dead ends and found that all the doors they’d passed before were suddenly either closed or gone. As they’d struggled to orientate themselves, their pursuer had kept coming, slow and relentless. Its gleaming bulk filled the corridor, so they couldn’t run past it. Though its aim was erratic, one of its lasers had clipped the edge of Zachery’s suit and burned a hole through it.

  Then, like a miracle, they’d reached a section of the facility so run down that it was in the process of falling apart. Big chunks of the ceiling were scattered all over the floor for them to hide behind. Just in time, because they were both out of breath. In the distance, Zachery could see a hole in the wall that led outside. It was wide enough for them to squeeze through.

  A pity they didn’t have a hope in hell of reaching it, given that now the robot had them pinned down, firing relentlessly at the masonry they were crouched behind. Neither the rocks Zachery was throwing at it nor Antoine’s brave little stun gun seemed to be doing jack shit, and it was less than fifty yards away.

  “A robot. What next? Will we find out the facility’s built on top of a fucking sarlacc?” Antoine ground out. “What are you doing? Get down!”

  “Got a plan,” said Zachery, making ready to stand up. “I’m a fast runner; I’ll get its attention and draw it off down that way, while you try to get outside through that hole. I’ll lead it in circles for a while, and then I’ll follow you out.”

  “Don’t be an imbecile. You’ll get yourself killed,” Antoine snapped, grabbing a handful of his hair and forcing him back down.

  Oh God. How fucked up was he that having his scalp almost ripped off by Antoine’s skinny girl fingers was a turn-on?

  “You got a better plan?” Zachery asked to cover his embarrassment. “Hey, look down there. You see that?”

  From where they crouched, they could see straight down three corridors: the one down which the robot was steadily advancing, the one that led to the hole, and a third, down which…something was coming towards them. The only source of illumination they had were the lasers being fired at them and a few beams of sunlight coming in through the hole, and it took a moment for Zachery to realise that the object coming their way was green.

  “I think it’s Rux,” he said. “The captain’s on his back.”

  “That is the usual state of affairs.”

  “No, I mean the captain’s riding him.”

  “That, too, is…”

  “Antoine!” came the captain’s hoarse voice.

  The
robot took that as its cue to divert its efforts away from the two of them and towards the green lion bearing down on it. It fired twice, thrice, and three more times, and Rux dodged every one, lunging this way and that while the captain clung to his mane for dear life.

  Super agile, super strong, ageless, and a shapeshifter, thought Zachery. What else was he capable of? If there’d once been a whole species of Ruxes, what had their wars looked like? Maybe it’s no wonder they went extinct.

  Rux sped up, and when he was less than ten metres from the robot, he jumped into the air and came down right on top of it. As he did, one of its shots hit home, and Zachery saw a wide swath of green fur burned clean off. It didn’t seem to bother him. Raising one massive paw, he took off the robot’s head with a swipe and then used his teeth to tear off its flailing limbs.

  “Nice,” commented Zachery.

  While Rux mauled the twitching remains, the captain waved the two of them over.

  “Get on, quickly,” he said. “Have you got the parts? The DG ring?”

  “Dropped them a way back when the robot showed up,” said Zachery. “It’s not too far.”

  Big as Rux was, fitting all three of them onto his back was a squeeze. Antoine, to Zachery’s disappointment, chose to sit up front, in the captain’s lap. The extra weight didn’t slow Rux down at all. As he charged down the corridor towards where Zachery had left their prizes, Antoine rapped on his feline skull. “Alien, I trust you have an explanation for this absolute pig’s ear of a situation?”

  “The facility has registered us as intruders and is attempting to expel us,” said Rux.

  “I grasped that much. Didn’t you give us your assurance that wouldn’t happen? Because you ‘know how everything works’?”

  “I will explain as soon as we are out of danger.”

  The DG ring and the other parts were lying where Zachery had dropped them. Zachery, who by this point was thoroughly creeped out by the whole fucking building, had half expected to find that the floor had eaten them.

  Less fortuitous was the fact that as soon as they had picked them up and made ready to leave, a panel opened in the ceiling, and three more robots dropped down to land in front of them, guns at the ready.