by A. K. DuBoff
The meaty thwhacks and pained apologies of Meegan fighting her way out of the restaurant faded behind him as Rico plodded down the corridor. Forcegates across shops on both sides of him glitched and blinked as the power continued to choke, but it didn’t matter. The Captain’s Yacht had a self-powered launch. Even if the Queen’s engines were dead cold, he could still escape. He just had to get to it.
A twinge of guilt slowed his step. They. They had to get to it.
Rico clenched his eyes and shook his head.
No. He. There was no ‘they’. There was never a ‘they’.
A shrill scream ripped the air behind him. He whirled around to see Meegan, just outside the restaurant, soaked in blood. Not briny yellow alien blood. Red blood, gushing from her own torn-open shoulder. A burly Qualexi deckhand grasped and lashed at her with arms and tentacles. His gnarled jaws gored with flesh and knotted with tattered gingham.
“Rico!” Meegan cried. “Rico! Help!”
Rico froze, one foot inside the elevator. This was his chance. His only chance.
He had to go.
He stepped into the lift, but the sound of snapping ribs and an aborted screech drew his attention back to Meegan. She was down. The deckhand’s massive, tattooed tentacles wrapped around her chest in a crushing embrace. She swatted at his clapping jaws and gasped for breath. Strong as she was, even she couldn’t win this fight without oxygen. Two more Qualexi lurched out of the restaurant and stumbled their way toward her prone body.
Rico tapped his crewNav band to the lift panel, turning the rows of red buttons green. He hovered his finger over the one marked “bridge.”
He willed himself to push it.
Meegan’s scream choked to a strangled sob.
His hand balled into a fist. “Oh, for hekk’s sake!”
Rico charged out of the elevator with a savage roar. Adrenalin powered his thin arms as he grabbed Meegan’s barstool and swung it at the deckhand like he was hitting a gong. The mutant hissed and tumbled over, dazed but still very much alive. Rico clawed at his twitching tentacles, frantically peeling them off Meegan’s body.
“Let’s go.” His breath quickened as the other Qualexi drew closer. “Now!”
Meegan took Rico’s hand and pulled herself to her feet. They clutched one another for support and staggered into the center lift. Rico mashed the top button and the doors slid closed. The car rattled and sluggishly ascended as the machinery struggled to pull power from the ship’s unstable grid.
Meegan planted her palms on the wall, coughing and sucking air in ragged breaths. “Thank… you. So… strong. I couldn’t…” She turned her head toward Rico and caught a glimpse of her own torn-up shoulder. A gasp choked from her lips as the pain of her injury burst through the protective shell of her panic.
Rico was plastered to the opposite wall of the lift. Eyes wide. Face ghostly pale. The amount of blood seeping from the massive gash in Meegan’s back was making him lightheaded.
“Are you…” His voice came out thin and high. He cleared his throat. “Are you all right?”
Meegan’s breath steadied. She gave a tiny shrug and grimaced. “Looks like I’m not going to be wearing my strapless gown anytime soon.” Rico just stared at the torn flesh, his jaw hanging open in horror. Meegan’s brow raised. “That was a joke, by the way. I don’t own a strapless gown.”
Rico blinked. Meegan let out a pained chuckle. The tension cracked as Rico chuckled with her. He raked his bony fingers through the sides of his hair and let out a hot breath.
“Mertz, Meegan. Were you always such a badass?”
Meegan waved it off. “They build ’em tough on the Sux. Still, I’d like to keep some of my blood on the inside, if possible.”
She tapped a panel on the wall engraved with the Sturf glyph for ‘medikit’. It opened, revealing a compact cache of emergency supplies. Using her good hand, she tore open a foil packet of gauzegel. She reached over her shoulder and tried to turn her head, but the injury was too inconveniently placed for her to see or reach.
“Rico, help me out.”
She placed the packet into Rico’s hand and turned her back to him, presenting her gored shoulder. He took a half step back and bumped into the opposite wall. “No. I’m not a… I don’t want to hurt you.”
Meegan snorted. “Quit being a baby. Gauzegel doesn’t hurt. You know that.”
Rico frowned. Gauzegel was a powerful antiseptic and wound dressing, but its real selling point was its anesthetic properties. The second this stuff got in your bloodstream it hit you with an endorphin rush like a three-stage rocket of sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. Rico had used it plenty of times before, but only recreationally.
He held the packet over Meegan’s shoulder and squeezed out some gel, releasing an intense sugary-lemon aroma. The instant the first drop landed in Meegan’s wound, her whole body drooped. She leaned on the wall, letting out a dreamy sigh. “Oooh, yeah. That’s better.” Her face melted into a goofy smile. “Rub it in.”
Rico shook his head at the reservoir of blood and pearly goo in her flesh. “I don’t think so.”
Meegan gently grabbed his wrist and lifted it toward the bite. “Come on. If you don’t rub it, the skin won’t form, and we’ll have to start again.”
Rico knew she was right. He clenched his teeth and pressed his fingertips into the center of her raw wound, hesitantly moving them in a circle. The gauzegel reacted immediately, congealing into a pale blue skin the consistency of rubber surgical gloves.
Meegan sank into the depths of her induced high, groaning as Rico’s long fingers worked the gel to the edges of the bite. Euphoria weakened her knees and she lurched toward the floor, but Rico threw his other arm around her, catching her under the ribs. She giggled as he struggled to keep her upright, squeezing her back to his chest as he used his palm to smooth the last of the thickening gel into a clean, even seal.
Meegan’s head lolled lazily to one side with a lopsided grin. “Aww. Thank you, Rico. You’re such a good person.” She reached up and caught his hand, pulling it down to wrap his arm around her. “You were always so good to me.”
She closed her eyes and curled into him, nuzzling like an affectionate cat. The gesture saturated Rico with his own all-natural endorphin rush. Meegan’s warm-blooded body against his felt so right. Their forms fit together so effortlessly. She was just so unmistakably human.
A tingle of regret crept through Rico’s mind. Back in the day, he’d never appreciated how good he had it. Meegan had always been affectionate, but he hadn’t returned any more tenderness than he had to. Holding hands. Snuggling in front of reruns on the holo. A little bit of making out. A part of him shuddered at the memory. He used to hate kissing Meegan. Hated the feel of her dry mouth on his lips. Of her acne-scabbed face rubbing oil on his cheeks. But now… everything had changed.
Meegan’s adult body was firm in his embrace. Muscular and powerful. She sighed contentedly and turned her head. Her features had matured so strikingly. So… beautifully. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheek. He could almost taste the satin of her soft lips on his.
She was so much different now. So much better.
Rico shifted his grasp, slowly turning Meegan to face him. Her head rolled to his shoulder and nestled against his neck. Her hands moved languidly to his hips as his own slid down her back, coming to rest on the firm curve of her behind.
Meegan snorted and stiffened, as if awakening from a dream.
“Oh!” Her cheeks blossomed crimson. “Oh, uh…”
Rico didn’t release his grip on her posterior. “Shh. Everything is okay. You’re with Rico. I’m gonna take care of you.”
His eyes drifted shut as he pulled her in for a kiss. Just like the old days, except better in every way.
“Wait.” Meegan grabbed his wrists and pushed his hands away from her backside.
Rico raised an eyebrow as she slipped from his arms. “What’s wrong? I thought you wanted—”
“I
do! I do. It’s just… Not here. Not like this.” Meegan fussed with the rubbery blue patch on her shoulder and adjusted her sticky, blood-soaked shirt. “I’m sorry, I know this is the drugs talking and I should really shut up now, but I always imagined, gah, I don’t know.” She looked at her shuffling feet. “I just want it to be special. To be perfect.”
The words between the words resolved in Rico’s mind. “Wait, are you saying you’ve never…”
Meegan groaned. “Okay, it’s not like I’m some kind of loser. I had suitors come calling, but none of them were…” She took a breath, trying to clear her head. “None of them were you.”
Her eyes ticked up and caught Rico in a beam of pure vulnerability. He knew the gauzegel had made the words come easier, but that didn’t make them any less sincere.
“So, you just… what? You waited for me?”
A tiny, melancholy smile teased Meegan’s lips. “What can I say, Rico? You were the one that got away.”
Conflicting emotions crashed hot and cold in Rico’s chest. The heat of this lovely creature’s admission that she still cared for him forming a storm front against the frosty guilt of leaving her in the first place. Because the truth was, he wasn’t ‘the one that got away’. He was ‘the one who ran away at a quarter light speed and never looked back’.
But maybe he should have.
He opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out. For once, Rico Diamond was speechless. In his proxy, the lift replied with a bright ping and opened its doors.
The noise startled Meegan, smothering her endorphin rush with a spike of fight-or-flight adrenalin. She dipped into a crouch, prepared to meet anything that would come through that door with a full-frontal attack. But there was nothing on the other side but the abandoned command bridge of the Cosmic Queen.
She stepped out of the lift and into a vestibule, eyes wide and jaw slack. Just beyond a broad arch, three recessed rows of gleaming white consoles blinked with alerts nobody was there to address. But Meegan wasn’t gaping at the controls. She was looking out the enormous domed window at a magnificent panorama of space. A great purple and orange nebula dominated the view, its vaporous fingers reaching out into a void of starry blackness sprawling to infinity in every direction.
“It’s… it’s so beautiful,” Meegan whispered reverently.
Rico barely gave it a glance as he hustled past her. “Eh. It’s space. You get used to it.”
Meegan shook her head numbly. “I don’t think I could. It’s breathtaking.”
Her hand slipped into Rico’s and squeezed. He squeezed back. Even after all these years, it felt familiar. Like they were still in high school, standing under a different starry sky. A much duller one, muted by the farm moon’s hazy artificial atmosphere. Meegan’s awestruck smile made Rico feel empty inside. The poor girl was mesmerized by something as ordinary as space. In her whole life, she probably hadn’t seen anything more exotic than an invasive cornesque weevil. Because she had spent her whole life trapped on the Sux. Waiting for him.
He had stolen decades from her. And she didn’t care. She didn’t even know. She was just happy they were finally together again. And here he was, using her to get what he wanted. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.
It wasn’t too late to fix it.
Rico looked into Meegan’s glimmering eyes and steeled himself. “Meegan, listen. There’s something I need to tell—”
Before he could finish his thought, a sharp ping echoed through the bridge. Rico and Meegan both whipped around to see a second lift slide open. Two of the Qualexi from the promenade spilled out, gurgling and hissing.
“The infected!” Meegan cried. “How did they…”
Rico noticed the green keys glowing from the mutants’ wristbands.
“Mertz! They’re crew!” His eyes darted, looking for a place to take cover. There was nowhere to go, but the peculiar arch between the foyer and the command center jogged a memory. “Get back!”
He shoved Meegan as hard as he could, sending her sprawling onto the bridge. He lurched toward a control panel, swiped his band, and mashed a pad labeled ‘Start presentation’.
A transparent forcegate sizzled into place in the broad arch separating the vestibule from the control stations, punctuated by a musical flourish and a booming voice.
“Ah, hello there. Welcome aboard, new recruits!”
The Qualexi and Meegan all looked surprised to see a two-dimensional man slide out of the wall and casually stroll across the entryway. He was a Sturf, broad-chested with burnished orange skin and a perfectly formed crown of horns. His uniform was as immaculate in holographic form as Rico remembered it being in real life.
“I’m Captain K’vendle, and it is my honor to show you around the command center of your new home, the Cosmic Queen. Let’s start with the communications console.”
The holoprojection raised his arm, and a yellow outline appeared on the face of the forcegate. From Rico’s perspective it drew a rectangle around a Qualexi waiter, but from the other side, it would perfectly surround the control panel to his left. However, the mutants weren’t here for a new-hire orientation tour. They were here to kill. They lurched at the captain fangs-first, but he continued his spiel unabated as they bounced off the photon-thin wall.
Rico hustled to Meegan, still leaning against the console where he had shoved her. “You okay?”
Meegan nodded, but she didn’t take her eyes off the infected aliens clawing at the lecturing captain like cats scratching aquarium glass. “I’ll be a lot better once we’re off this horrible ship.” She grabbed Rico’s hand. “Where’s the Captain’s Yacht?”
Rico’s gaze drifted. “Right. That. Well…” He crossed to a small hatchway at the far end of the bridge. “It’s, uh… It’s here.”
He swiped his crewNav over the lock-pad and the door slid open in a neat iris, revealing what appeared to be a cramped metal closet housing a single chair.
Meegan squeezed inside and kneeled on the seat to take a closer look. There was nothing to see but padded consoles packed tightly around her. “I don’t get it. How do you get to the rest of it?”
“There is no rest of it.” Rico’s voice tightened. “The Captain’s Yacht is a one-person escape pod.”
Meegan fell still. She shifted in the snug space, coming off her knees and flopping down in the seat. “But how are we both…”
“We’re not. You are.”
“What?” Meegan’s eyes went wild. “No. Rico! I’m not leaving you here!”
She tried to climb out of the capsule, but Rico gently pushed her back, easing her into the chair. “Yes, you are. You deserve this.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? We both—”
“Meegan, please. I’ll be fine.” Rico waved at the comm console. “I’ll hunker down here and call for help. As soon as I get rescued, I’ll find you. I promise. But right now I need you to be safe.”
“How is this safe? I don’t know how to fly a spaceship!”
“You don’t have to. Look,” Rico gestured to an autonav panel and a stasis generator, “no manual controls. It’ll get you to safety automatically. That’s literally its only function.”
Doubt tightened Rico’s chest, but he knew he was doing the right thing. He had to make sure she was okay. He had to give her a second chance to live the life he had stolen from her. Even if it meant…
The snarling of the Qualexi monsters grated in his ears. He focused on Meegan’s blanching face.
“You’ll be fine. Trust me.”
He leaned into the hatch and waved his crewNav at the ignition pad. The panels in the Yacht blinked on in sequence and began running self-diagnostics. Meegan yelped as the restraints closed over her, locking her to the seat and squeezing stasis inducers to her temples. A thirty-second launch timer awakened on the arm of the chair.
Rico took a deep breath. “Listen, Meegan. I’m sorry I never came back to the Sux. I wish I could change the past, but I can’t. I can only change the future
.” He struggled to find the words. “When we’re together again, I… I want to pick up where we left off. But for now…” A sober smile tugged at his cheeks. “I want to give you a goodbye kiss.”
He leaned in, but Meegan twisted her face away. “I’d rather not.”
Rico paused, his puckered lips going slack. “Wait, what?”
“I don’t want to kiss you.”
“But… what?” His eyebrows knitted. “I don’t get it. You… you said you waited for me.”
Meegan tugged a lock of hair from under a stasis inducer, making sure it made good contact with her temple. “I did wait for you. For three whole harvests. And then I met your mother.” Her airy voice went cold. “She’s never served in the Space Corps. She’s never even been off-world. She’s a waitress, Rico. And a pacifist.”
Meegan’s glare formed an icy brick in Rico’s stomach. There was no way he could dig himself out of this. At this point, there was no reason to try.
He blew out a long, cathartic breath. “Okay. It’s true. Everything I told you about her was a lie. Everything I told you was a lie, period.” His body loosened as the tension of old secrets leeched out of it. “I confess, our entire relationship was a long con to get you to convince your dad to fly me off the Sux. I knew the deep-space cruise liners stopped at the orbit docks, and I knew if I could just get to one… If they could only hear me sing, they would…”
His voice trailed off. She didn’t need the details. The broad strokes were damning enough. Meegan’s stare cut him to the bone.
“You never loved me, Rico. You exploited my feelings to make me think what you wanted was what I wanted. You made me care about you just so you could use me to escape.”
Rico nodded grimly. “I did. And I’m sorry, Meegs. I’m so very sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Meegan waved him off, flashing the red X on her guestNav bracelet. “It’s a solid con. And so simple even a beginner can pull it off.”
She rested her hand next to the ticking green digits of the launch countdown. Rico’s eyes widened as he glanced at the green key on his crewNav. Meegan continued.