Seven Days - A Space Romance (10 page)

They made their way through the destroyed deck, then up an elevator shaft. The elevator car was crashed at the bottom, but they didn’t need it; they just glided up the shaft with gentle pushes of their boot-thrusters.

They found the engine room past a hallway crowded with the dead, all piled together so closely that they hovered in a tangle, unable to separate and drift away like the others. Kaden pushed past the uniformed bodies and tugged on the door. It had lain open a crack and the heavy door slid to the side even without power.

Her heart hammered as they entered the massive engine room. Cylinders and cables lay scattered everywhere. It reminded her of her hovercar’s engine, only a thousand times larger and more complicated. In the distance, a faint red light flashed on the emergency-beacon panel, a warning a bit too late for the poor
Yokohama
’s crew.

Using the computer in her helmet, she checked the records for lifepods while Kaden moved forward, tugging her along their tether. Just as she’d always heard—not a single one remained. They’d all jettisoned at the time of the crash, though only half had been recovered. Shame. She’d been hoping they would catch a break.

“Here it is,” Kaden said, moving below another row of titanium metal boxes and running a hand over an enormous, rounded cylinder the size of a hovercar. “Get the latches on the far side.”

She moved as far as the tether would allow, drifting over the bulky compressor. She couldn’t reach the other side, not with the belt tying her to him. Zoey turned back to Kaden. “I’m going to need to unhook. You ok?”

“I’m fine.”

She quickly unhooked herself and pushed forward, drifting to the other side of the compressor and landing squarely on her feet. She crouched, examining the compressor’s anchor mechanisms. A series of clamps locked it in place on both sides. “I’m unlocking now.”

“Got it. Let me know when you have the last one undone.”

They worked together, a quiet, efficient team, none of their usual laughing and teasing at hand. When she got to her last lever, they timed it and freed the compressor together. The enormous box began to drift free, and she placed a hand on it to guide it. The damn thing had no handles; the sides were slick. “And we need to take this to the
Cephalon
, right?”

“Yes. It’s got two unjettisoned lifepods. I’d say we could rig this to
Alcestis
, but this drive’s an old one and not compatible with our ship. But we could rig it to the bottom of one of the lifepods because they’re made to have interchangeable parts. And
Cephalon
’s only one generation away from the
Yokohama
.”

Of course it was. The
Cephalon
had “gone down” on a retrieval mission of the
Yokohama
’s richest passengers and their bodies. The
Cephalon
had been little better than a contracted salvager that should have never been sent into fringe-space anyhow, and so the old ship had massive engine failure when arriving in the star system. The crew had waited fifty-three days before rescue had arrived, and the old ship was abandoned. Now it simply drifted in space next to the other one. The lifepods had never jettisoned because the crew on board had waited for rescue. Perfect.

That didn’t solve their current problem, though—getting the precious compressor over to the
Alcestis
so they could tow it to the
Cephalon
. They weren’t going to be able to do it tethered again. “Do you want me to stay on the far side, or do you want to take it?”

“I’ll lead,” he told her. “Just try to guide from behind.” As she watched, he took the free-dangling tether and looped it through the grid on the front of the compressor.

“Be careful,” she told him. She had a sudden nightmare vision of the compressor getting momentum and dragging him through the depths of space.

Through the helmet’s visor, she saw his grin, so close to his normal cocky self. “This thing’s our ticket out of here. If we lose it, it doesn’t matter if I’m tied to it or not—we’re both still fried.”

Of course. How silly of her. She felt her face flush. “Let’s just go, then.”

He pushed forward, goosing his boot-thrusters a little, and they made slow progress back out the main airlock, then into the berth of the ship. Zoey forced herself to concentrate on guiding the compressor, though she cringed every time a bit of flotsam from the wreck came close to hitting it. The last thing she wanted was to send everything spinning out of control and make it impossible for Kaden to guide them safely out of there.

The journey back through the
Yokohama
was grueling and slow, but they made progress slowly, surely. Zoey was grateful when the star-filled depths of space suddenly appeared in her visor again. The
Yokohama
was making her feel positively claustrophobic.

They broke free from the wreck, and there in the distance, like a gleaming white star, was the
Alcestis
, drifting in place, waiting for them. Good. She was exhausted, mentally and physically. “Almost there,” she told Kaden cheerfully. “Then we’re off to the showers.”

“Probably a good idea to break out that bath,” he told her and she could almost hear the strained chuckle in his voice. “I’ll even join you.”

“You’re welcome to,” she said warmly. A piece of debris was hanging perilously close, and she let go of the compressor for a second to go and bat it out of the way. It smacked into something else, and she winced. “You’re doing awesome. We’re so close. We—”

A piece of wreckage—sent spinning by the object she’d carelessly pushed aside—careened onto the compressor, sending it spinning. The enormous cylinder began to spin into deep space. She tried to cling to it, but there was nothing to hold onto on her side, and it tossed her out into open space, her body flipping over and over again in the null gravity.

“Zoey!” Kaden’s scream echoed in the utter silence of space.

“I’m good,” she told him, keeping her voice calm. “Don’t worry about me. I’m all right.”

And then the shadow of something massive fell over her helmet, two seconds before she collided with an asteroid.

#

She smacked against the rock, hard, and every muscle in her body went tense when she felt the rough surface scrape her spacesuit. Just the tiniest hole and her suit would depressurize, killing her in a matter of moments.

Nothing.

She exhaled slowly, holding her arms out to try and stop her wild careening into space. A few quick, short thrusts of her boot-thrusters and she tried to slow her momentum. She was getting dizzy, the rings of Titan 34 zooming in and out of her vision repeatedly with her spinning.

“I’m good,” she said to Kaden, finally slowing her endless flipping just as an enormous second asteroid drifted past. Well, no wonder the
Yokohama
had looked so pitted. The asteroid that they’d hit must have broken apart on contact. “You ok over there?”

No response but static. She smacked the side of her helmet and got an earful of screeching static feedback and quickly shut off the radio. Well, shit. She must have messed it up when she’d cracked her helmet on the asteroid. Figured that of all the open space out here, she’d get clobbered by an asteroid. Her own damn fault.

 She waited for the asteroid to lumber past. It was easily the size of a grav-ball field, and she didn’t feel like trying to navigate around it, lest she collide with it again. When it finally moved past, she zoomed back toward the wreck of the
Yokohama
, scanning the mess of debris for Kaden and the compressor. Kaden would likely be frantic that she’d fallen off the radio signal, and she wanted to get back to him fast, reassure him.

By the time she cleared the asteroid and returned, she was relieved to see that the compressor had gotten wedged into the hull of the
Yokohama
. Kaden was still hooked to it, his movements jerky as he tugged at the tether. Well, this made it easy for her. She moved up slowly, waving her arm so as not to startle him. Damn, she wished she could radio. He wasn’t looking in her direction at all. Again, as she watched, he gave another angry jerk of the tether. The compressor was just pushed between two stationary pieces of debris—it’d be simple to free it. Why was he fixated on the tether? She kept waving as she crossed the distance back to him, but he wasn’t looking her way.

Finally, she made it back to Kaden’s side and touched a glove to his shoulder.

He jerked around in surprise, nearly sending her spinning again, and she clung to his arm.

The look he gave her was white-faced, stark. His helmet was fogged with condensation from panicked breath, the whites of his eyes huge. Oh, Kaden.

“I’m here,” she yelled in her helmet, and then gestured at the radio. “I can’t hear anything.”

His face was tight, his mouth compressed into a tight line. He simply stared at her, and she didn’t know if he was going into shock, or furious.

She gently moved to the far side of the compressor, moved the debris blocking it, and released it. It began to drift free again and she resumed her old position behind it, only to have Kaden come to her side and grasp her in his arm, hauling her against him.

She didn’t fight him; she couldn’t communicate, so fighting him would just cause problems. And she said nothing when he set his boot-thrusters on high, speeding them recklessly close to
Alcestis
. Something was wrong. Was he low on oxygen? She bit back her worry, knowing it’d do no good. She couldn’t ask, after all. Her comm link was dead.

They made it back to the
Alcestis
without incident (nearly careening past in their speed, Zoey noted, but said nothing) and they quickly tethered the compressor to the grav-lines outside of the docking bay and hauled it into the cargo hold. Then they went to the portal and waited for the air to re-pressurize before opening the door and moving back into the interior of the
Alcestis
.

No sooner were they inside the ship and everything back to normal than Kaden was clawing at his helmet. He ripped it off and flung it across the room and then ripped at hers. She pushed at the fastenings quickly, eager to talk to him. His face was so pale, so grim.

“Are you okay?” she asked as soon as her helmet was off and she could throw it across the room.

He grabbed her by the cheeks, planting his gloved hands on the sides of her face—the plastic still bitterly cold from space—and kissed her furiously.

#

He thought he’d lost her.

Kaden kissed Zoey even more feverishly, his tongue stroking into her soft mouth in a possessive move. She was startled under him, not quick to open up, but he kept pushing, needing to possess her, the ache in his chest staggering.

He’d been doing all right with the space-walking, thanks to Zoey’s cheerful demeanor and their endless practice sessions over the last forty-eight hours. And while it’d never be his favorite thing, he wasn’t flipping out like all those times he had before. That had been all right. Until debris had smacked into the compressor, sending it spiraling and him with it. When he’d managed to straighten it, he’d looked up, seen Zoey slam into an asteroid, and then careen into space.

He’d panicked. Totally and completely lost his shit at that moment. He’d charged his thrusters at full blast, thinking of his beautiful, funny science officer unconscious out there somewhere, hurtling through open space. Kaden had screamed her name, over and over again, but it had been silent on her end.

But charging his thrusters at full blast had only succeeded in lodging the compressor behind a wall of junk, and he’d frantically tried to free it—and then himself. His brain had been misfiring, blackness crawling at the edges of his vision.

He’d lost her.

He’d fucking
lost
her.

She was the only reason he hadn’t put that same goddamn blaster to his head that Garcia had. Sweet, beautiful Zoey, with the hope in her eyes that he’d fix this and bring them both home.