Adrift Collection

by T. J. Land

  “Well, shit,” said Zachery, and he did the only thing he could think of; he charged the one closest to him.

  To his surprise, he landed a solid punch on its jaw without being vaporised. Not that it did much good; the robot didn’t flinch, and he heard something crack in his hand, but it didn’t hurt. Back in the days when he’d beaten up other guys for money, he’d never felt his injuries until the match was over. He tried punching its chest with his unbroken hand instead, looking for a weak point, only for it to push him back as though he weighed as much as a pillow. He was thrown into the captain, sending them both to the floor.

  Rux was busy tearing one of them apart, but the other two paid no attention to him or to their unlucky friend. They took one step forward, raising their weapons while Zachery scrabbled to position his body in front of the captain’s and the captain tried to push him aside, presumably so that he could do the same thing. Antoine, meanwhile, had taken out his stun gun and was waving it at them, screaming invective. It was pathetic and also so badass Zachery’s balls ached.

  First Officer Prissypants, I am one hundred percent gone on you. This is going to be such a fucking problem.

  “Antoine, get back!” the captain shouted.

  Then the unmistakable crack of a laser rifle split the air, and the leftmost robot’s head exploded. Before it had even hit the floor, the second one followed suit, crumpling while sparks flew from the new gaping hole in its metallic skull.

  “Hi there, losers,” said Thomas from behind his victims, lowering the rifle. Echo stood at his shoulder, regarding them all with his habitual air of detachment.

  “Twerp!” Zachery cried, rushing forward to seize Thomas in a bear hug.

  “Well timed, Mister Meléndez,” said the captain as Antoine helped him to his feet. “Echo, congratulations. Your first ever failure to obey a direct order came at the best possible moment.”

  Rux, bits of robot dangling from his jaws, said, “If your engineer now has the parts he requires, I believe we should all leave this place at once.”

  Chapter Six

  By the time they were far enough away from the facility for Thomas not to keep looking over his shoulder for advancing robot hordes, it was nightfall. They made camp beneath two trees, and the captain contacted The Prayer to let the others know they were all right. Now that they were out, their comms were working again.

  As the temperature dropped, they sat around a fire, chewing on protein strips.

  “What a fucking day. Sure could use some fresh, healthy vegetables right now,” said Zachery, rubbing his neck.

  “Explanation time,” said Antoine, addressing Rux. “Alien, you said you deactivated the facility’s security. You lied, and as a result of your lie, we were almost killed.”

  Rux had turned back into his humanoid form and sat cross-legged beside Zachery, his hands in his lap. “There is something I must confess. You remember I told you that I worked in the facility, and that was how I understood its inner workings?”

  “Let me guess; you lied about that too?”

  “No. I was truthful. To a certain degree. I did work there.”

  “Wait, I know,” said Zachery. “You were a janitor, right? Or the guy who made the coffee while everyone else did the real work?”

  “I was an experiment. I was born in one of the tubes as part of their programme to create highly adaptable, resilient servants who could help them colonise other planets.”

  “‘Them’?” said Antoine. “So when you refer to ‘your people’, you are in fact referring to the beings who made you?”

  Rux nodded. “In truth, I had as much in common with them as your ship’s cat has with you. I did consider myself one of them for a while, though I eventually learned that the feeling was not mutual. When they were forced to divert all their energies towards finding a cure for the plague, they lost interest in creating more of me. I was used as a test subject, then a security guard, then a low-level assistant. That is why my understanding of their technology is incomplete. I don’t know what they would have done with me if they hadn’t gone extinct. I suspect they would have been horrified at the thought that I would outlive them.”

  For the first time since Thomas had met the guy, he looked meek and ashamed of himself. “I didn’t intend to put you in harm’s way. I thought I remembered how to gain access to the facility without triggering the alarm. Clearly, I was mistaken.”

  “I suppose that goes some way to absolving you,” said Antoine. “Nonetheless…”

  “Aw, lay off him, Ant. He’s sorry,” Zachery interjected.

  “‘Sorry’ doesn’t quite cut it, Mister Halberstam.”

  “Enough,” said the captain, who was lying with his head in Thomas’s lap. “Rux, your deception endangered the lives of my crew, and it will be some time before I forgive you for it. That said, I am sympathetic to your situation. We all have our secrets.”

  “Yeah, we do,” agreed Thomas. “All sorts of secrets. Like when our birthdays are. That’s one hell of a secret to keep, isn’t it, Captain?”

  The captain cleared his throat. “Er…yes. Indeed.”

  “One hell of a secret to keep from people you’re sleeping with,” Thomas continued, glaring at him. “Kind of a shitty thing to do, keeping a secret like that. You could really hurt someone’s feelings.”

  He kept the glare going until the captain sighed and reached up to touch his face. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hmph. How come you didn’t say anything? I told you when it was my birthday. Hell, I’ve told you everything there is to know about me.”

  “I was afraid you would want to celebrate.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s dumb. If you didn’t want me to bake you a cake and stuff, you could’ve asked me not to. I’d have understood.”

  To show that he accepted the captain’s apology, Thomas leaned down and kissed his forehead. Drawing back, he added, “Of course, now I’m going to have to bake you a cake to get back at you, you duplicitous motherfucker. Oh yeah. I’m going to bake you a spite cake. And I’m going to sing the world’s most obnoxious birthday song while you eat it.”

  “How old’re you, anyway?” asked Zachery.

  The captain sighed and said a number. Thomas’s jaw sagged.

  “That… Damn,” he said. “You look a lot younger than that, Captain.”

  “Khurshed. Call me Khurshed.”

  “Khurshed,” said Thomas, suspecting he was mispronouncing it.

  Zachery squinted at the captain’s face. “Even on Mars, there were a lot of guys who went in for those anti-ageing treatments. Gotta say, Captain, never seen them work that well.”

  “He supplements the pills with the blood of virgins,” said Antoine, glancing at his comm. “Speaking of which, we just received a message from Rick. He’s out of the med pod and doing well.”

  On the other side of the campfire, Echo was stargazing. Seen through the floating sparks, Thomas thought he looked ethereal, far more alien than the actual alien in their midst. Much as Thomas wanted to call him over or catch his eye and wink at him, he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing either. One thing Thomas understood was that Echo preferred being alone most of the time. Whatever they were to each other now—and Thomas still hadn’t figured that out—Echo was never going to be as demonstrative as Rick or Zachery or even the captain.

  I can live with that.

  That night, they all slept in a loose ring, Thomas on the captain’s left, Zachery on his right. When the camp was quiet, Thomas felt a warm body cuddle up against his back. Rolling over, he spread his arms and let Echo into them.

  ✩✩✩

  Four days later, Zachery staggered out of The Prayer’s engine room, filthy and victorious, and found Antoine waiting for him.

  “Oh,” he said. “Hey.”

  They hadn’t spoken to one another since returning to the ship. Instead, Zachery had spoken to the captain, telling him all about what had happened, what he’d said and what Antoine had said. Without understanding how
, Zachery felt as though he’d fucked up, and the captain was the closest thing they had to a confessional. He was also Antoine’s ex, if Thomas had been telling the truth.

  The captain had listened to the whole story, looking now and then as though he wanted to laugh his ass off and, now and then, as though he wanted to hang Zachery upside down over a bucket of radioactive waste. When Zachery had finished, he hadn’t done either of those things. He’d explained, schoolteacher style, what “asexual” meant, and wow, had Zachery felt like a chump when he was done. He’d known without being told that he owed Antoine an apology. Not that he’d relished the prospect. The challenge posed by installing their new DG ring and getting the ship back on her feet had been a handy excuse.

  “Mister Halberstam,” Antoine greeted him. “How go the repairs?”

  “I think I’ve got her up and running. Going to run some tests after lunch.”

  “The captain will be pleased to hear it.”

  Zachery had been hoping for a compliment. The grudging satisfaction in Antoine’s tone was a palatable consolation prize. He was coming to understand that, where First Officer Prissyboots was concerned, he’d have to take what he was given and like it.

  “Hope there aren’t any hard feelings, Ant,” he said.

  “Whatever are you talking about, Zachery?”

  Bastard. Always got to do it the hard way. “On account of my being a jackass. I said a few stupid things. I didn’t mean nothing by ’em. I didn’t… I didn’t have much of an education, so there’s times when I get my facts wrong and shoot my mouth off about things I don’t get. Might have made myself look like an idiot. ’Course, you’ve got so much education that we probably all look like idiots to you. Anyway, I hope I didn’t piss you off past the point where we can…get along in the future. We’re crewmates, after all. Be a shame if we couldn’t get along.”

  Fuck, Antoine could be harder to read than Echo when he wanted to be. Zachery couldn’t get a damned thing out of his expression.

  “Yes, it would,” said Antoine, taking a step towards him, then another. Zachery was half-afraid he was going to whip out Mister Sparky. “We are going to be stuck with one another for the rest of our lives.”

  He was really close now. Zachery didn’t know if he should move back or not; he felt rooted to the floor.

  Then Antoine took hold of a handful of his hair and gave it a sharp tug. “More to the point, someone needs to teach you to behave. I can’t very well do that if we’re not on speaking terms, hmm?”

  Right at that moment, Zachery thought he would have spat on his mother’s grave if it had meant that Antoine would let him drop to his knees and suck his dick. He hadn’t ever sucked dick before, had never wanted to. Not that he didn’t like dick. Dick was awesome. Putting one in his mouth, though? Nah. That shit was for girls. Except apparently he was a girl, because all he could think about was how much more gorgeous Antoine would look glistening and erect, thrusting into his mouth, using him like a cheap…

  Antoine let go of his hair. “And you aren’t without admirable qualities. Attacking that robot was very brave of you.”

  What’s the matter with you? Zachery asked himself angrily. You shouldn’t be getting off on this. He’s not flirting; he’s not getting turned on himself. That doesn’t happen for him.

  Then he looked into Antoine’s eyes and thought: He’s not getting off on this, but he’s getting something from this. What is it? Does he just like making me feel weird? Is he a fucking sadist?

  “You were brave too, Ant,” he managed, his voice raw. “Got some things in common, I guess.”

  “We do. Maybe more than you think.” Antoine rolled up his shirt, putting paid to all Zachery’s higher brain functions, until he saw what he was supposed to see. Letters whose shape and size were hauntingly familiar to him, stretched over Antoine’s lower left ribcage, easily discernible even on his dark skin: 9AM33X9.

  Covering himself up again, Antoine said, “I’ll go tell the captain that we’re ready for a test flight. Good luck, Mister Halberstam.”

  ✩✩✩

  Echo sat under a tree, an unattended book in his lap, watching The Prayer soar overhead as Khali put her through her paces. Above him, looped around a branch, hung a long, green serpent. Rux had assumed the form shortly after his confession, and had yet to shift out of it. Echo assumed it was a gesture of penance.

  Echo himself wasn’t angry with Rux, which surprised him. Generally speaking, anyone besides Antoine who so much as inconvenienced the captain, much less put his life in danger, earned Echo’s eternal hatred. He thought that his lack of any real anger might be due to the fact that the captain himself didn’t seem to blame Rux for his deceit. Or perhaps it was simply that Echo had always felt a sense of kinship with shape-shifters.

  Setting aside his book, he reached up and took hold of one of Rux’s coils, tugging on it. The alien remained inert for a moment and then released his hold on the branch, allowing Echo to draw him down, loop by scaly loop.

  “Hello, mute one,” said Rux. “Ah…forgive me. The captain said I was not supposed to call you that.”

  Echo shrugged. He’d been called worse.

  Now with the bulk of his body in a pile in Echo’s lap, Rux began to twine around his arm. “I find it difficult to understand your species’ moods. Although perhaps that is less your failing than mine; I also found it difficult to understand the moods of those who created me. Tell me, Echo; do your crewmates despise me?”

  Echo shook his head and squirmed as Rux slithered by his armpit. He was ticklish.

  “Are you sure? The one with the shrill voice…his attitude towards me was hostile.”

  Antoine’s always like that, Echo signed.

  Rux was now draping himself across his shoulders, like a stole. It was, Echo reflected, the sort of behaviour that the others would have found intensely “creepy”. Yet another trait he and the alien shared.

  “Thank you. The reassurance is appreciated,” said Rux, flicking his forked tongue at him.

  Echo petted his head and settled back against the tree using Rux’s serpentine bulk as a neck rest to watch The Prayer descend gently to earth.

  ✩✩✩

  The captain sat in his study, listening to the contented hum of his ship’s engines. A knock made him glance up. “Enter.”

  Rick poked his head around the door. “Captain? You busy?”

  Their gardener’s ribs had been repaired. His hand had been salvaged, save for a touch of scarring and a pinkie that wouldn’t unfold all the way. As for his eye… The med pod had done its best. Its best hadn’t been good enough. Rick was currently wearing an eyepatch over the empty socket and had tried to make his captain feel better by saying that “now when we role-play that I’m a pirate and you’re my cabin boy it’ll feel more believable, Cap.”

  Levity aside, the captain knew it could have been much, much worse. That knowledge did nothing whatsoever to curb the guilt that swelled up in his throat as Rick’s remaining eye settled on him.

  “How can I help you, Rick?”

  “There’s… It’s kind of hard to explain, sir. There’s something you’ve gotta come and see. It’s important.”

  “Is it, indeed?” said the captain, thinking he had a fairly good idea of what it was. I deserve it, I suppose.

  Rick nodded fervently. “Oh, yeah. Super important. Urgent, even. If you don’t come right now, the ship’ll blow up and everybody’ll die.”

  Sighing, the captain placed his hands on Rick’s shoulders. Injecting a note of pleading into his voice, he said, “I suppose there’s nothing else we can find to do that’s equally ‘important’?”

  As usual, he derived an illicit thrill from how far he had to lean down to kiss Rick’s mouth.

  “Um…” said Rick, swallowing.

  “If we were to adjourn to my quarters, I’m sure I could muster up a cabin boy costume,” the captain whispered, kissing him again.

  Rick stayed the course. Brave lad. “Nope. So
rry, Captain. You’ve got to come and see this first.”

  Seeing no way out, the captain acquiesced. Rick took his hand, as though expecting him to try to make a run for it, and led him out of his office and in the direction of the kitchen.

  The captain had not addressed God in many years and was ashamed to do so now, under such embarrassing circumstances. Please, let there not being any singing. Let Thomas be merciful enough to spare me that. If there must be singing, please send Antoine a stroke so that he doesn’t tease me for the next decade.

  The kitchen was dark and ominously silent. Rick shut the door behind them, locked it, and turned on the lights while the captain braced himself for the perdition of candles and cake.

  There was no singing. There was only Zachery, holding what looked like one of Echo’s treasured baking tools—the one for making icing patterns on cupcakes—and Thomas. Thomas, who was naked. Thomas, who had the words “Happy Birthday Kurshid!!!” written across his chest and stomach in icing, along with a sloppily etched party balloon whose string ended at his groin.

  “Wasn’t my idea,” said Zachery. “I was gonna draw one balloon on him for every year of your life, except it turned out that there wasn’t enough icing. In all the universe, I mean.”

  “The joke is that you’re old, sir,” said Thomas, solemnly.

  “As God is my witness, I’m going to flog you insolent brats to within an inch of your lives,” the captain hissed, half his clothing already on the floor.

  By the time he’d finished giving Zachery the spanking of his life and wringing every last drop out of Thomas, they’d made a horrible mess of Echo’s kitchen. Worse, Rick started to hum “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow” while clenching around his cock. Even so, lying on his back afterwards, licking icing off Thomas’s torso, the captain was hard pressed to recall a birthday he’d enjoyed more.

  The Captain’s Promise

  Chapter One

  Dirty, panting, and sweating like a pig, Rick stood back and surveyed his greatest achievement. Ten rows of newly sown green beans, ten rows of spinach, and ten rows of zucchini; the first crops he’d planted outside the rigorously controlled and monitored confines of The Prayer’s oxygen garden in four years. The first Earth crops that had ever been planted on this planet. In this galaxy, even.