“I don’t carry passengers,” said Captain Leticia Williams of the cargo ship The Carrion. Leticia—or “Tish” as her friends used to call her, back when she had friends—thought that fact would be obvious to anyone with even a minor understanding of space travel. “I’m a cargo ship.”

Her ship, The Carrion, was nothing special to look at: a boxy Neptune IV class freighter that bore a striking resemblance to cargo freight boxes that her mother used to show her in old history books about Earth. Not only was The Carrion ugly as sin, but it was also docked in a bay clearly marked “Cargo Ships Only.” If her potential passenger had either brains or eyes in his head, he’d have known that he was trying to book passage on a cargo ship.

“I understand that,” the man replied, “and I have cargo, too.”

Tish flicked her eyes up and down the man standing in front of her. He was tall, taller than she was, which was impressive considering Tish towered above most of human males she encountered. But this male was most definitely not human.

Although humanoid in form, the man in front of her had a dark hood flipped up over the top of his head, covering his bright blue skin as best he could.

Despite the hoodie, passersby still stared at him. New Denver spaceport was a primarily human station and this man, with his azure skin, definitely drew attention. This was a welcome change for Tish, who, with her dark ebony skin and black, waist-length braids, usually stood out like a sore thumb in primarily Caucasian ports. It was kind of nice to have someone who was even more noticeably different that she was.

Still.

This guy was getting to be a bother.

“Look, Buddy, I’m sorry,” Tish continued, “but I’ve got to get straight to the Canasis system before next week. I don’t have time to drop off passengers or stop for any sightseeing.”

The alien’s golden eyes lit up and his face split into a wide grin. “That’s perfect!” he said. “My final destination is just two parsecs from Canasis. I can ride along with you and then hitch a ride home from there.”

Tish sighed.

“Look, Buddy,” she began. “I’m sorry, what’s your name? I feel weird calling you ‘Buddy.’”

“It’s ‘Buddy’,” the alien informed her, his face solemn. “That means ‘holy one’ in my native tongue.”

“Really?” Tish had never met a Trionese person before and spoke absolutely none of their language.

The alien nodded, serious for a moment, then chuckled. “No, I’m just messing with you. Sorry. I’m actually called Fleet,” he told her, stretching out one strong, blue hand toward Tish. “But you can call me ‘Buddy’ if that means you’ll let me ride with you to Canasis.”

“I already told you, Fleet,” Tish said. “I only take cargo, not people.”

“I’ve got credits—” Fleet began.

“So do I,” Tish cut him off, lying through her teeth. She was deeply in debt and everyone knew it. Less than a year ago, during a random inspection at a customs port, her entire cargo hold had been deemed contaminated with a Venutian virus and the whole shipment had to be destroyed. The Intergalactic Administrators took interplanetary contamination very seriously.

The only reason that Tish herself had escaped a fine was because her fiancé, Administrative Comptroller Lennox Lewis, had intervened on her behalf. So now, instead of owing the IA credits, she owed Lennox a favor. Or ten.

Tish scrubbed one hand over her tired face. This job was supposed to be bigger, it should have covered her expenses for a whole quarter and knocked off a bit of her debt, but when she arrived in New Denver, she discovered that the client had downsized the job and her fee would be less than a third of what she expected.

The new rate wouldn’t even cover a month of expenses, let alone a whole quarter.

“Look,” Fleet said, pulling his grey hood even further over his face and around glancing around the cargo bay. “I’m not a difficult traveler. Stow my cargo in the hold and give me some out of the way corner to sleep in. I won’t make much noise, you’ll barely know I’m there. I just… I just need to get out of New Denver. Please.”

Tish was about to say no, again, when the blue-skinned man gave another furtive glace around the loading bay and then opened his black canvas cargo jacket. Inside, sewed into the inside lining of the front panel of the jacket, was the signature blue and silver of hundreds, if not thousands, of Intergalactic Alliance credits.

“Oh shit,” Tish whispered. “Are those real?”

Fleet nodded once, sharply, and quickly zipped his black jacket back up over his grey hoodie. “They’re real.”

Tish shook her head in amazement, long black braids swinging around her slender shoulders. “I’ve never seen that many in physical form,” she whispered. “Man, I usually only see that many in digital accounts.”

In other people’s digital accounts, she did not say aloud. Tish’s own account had never broken five digits, she’d always stayed firmly in the thousands. But Fleet didn’t need to know that.

“It’s all yours, Captain Williams,” he said. “Twenty-five thousand to get me to Canasis—”

“Twenty-five thousand?” Tish practically choked.

“Twenty-five to get me there,” Fleet said. “Plus, another twenty-five when we touch down in port. I’ve got a contact on Canasis that will pay you the rest.”

This was ridiculous. Standard space liner travel to Canasis, even in a first class cabin aboard the most luxurious passenger vessel, cost no more than a thousand.

“Why are you paying me so much?” Tish asked.

Fleet looked at her, golden eyes locked onto Tish’s dark brown ones. “I need to get out of New Denver and I need to get out now,” he said, all traces of playfulness gone. “Will you take me?”

Tish nodded. “Grab your cargo and climb on board, Mr. Fleet,” she said.

Fleet raised a small, vacuum-locked steel suitcase. “This is it,” he informed Tish. “And it’s just Fleet, no need for the ‘mister.’”

Smirking, Tish led him toward The Carrion. “Ah, but here on The Carrion, we treat each and every one of our passengers with the utmost courtesy and respect,” she told him. “Now get your ass on board my ship, Mr. Fleet.”

 

***

 

The interior of The Carrion wasn’t much: just a large, dimly lit cargo hold, a miniscule cockpit and a handful of small cabins for the crew. Tish had had a crew once upon a time, but had lost most of them once the Intergalactic Administration had started raising their enlistment bonus. Turns out, you could make a whole lot more money manning a government ship than you could crewing a cargo freighter.

Tish’s fiancé, Lennox, kept trying to get her to give up The Carrion and join him working for the IA and, truth be told, it was tempting. The IA had better ships, better food, and higher wages. Tish was having a hard time remembering why she liked having her own ship and shipping business.

Aside from her own sparsely furnished captain’s quarters, there were four empty cabins. Once The Carrion was safely in orbit, Tish led Fleet to the one furthest from her own.

“Here you go, Mr. Fleet,” she said, gesturing her arm around the small, bare room. A stacked bunk bed leaned against one wall and a series of drawers was tucked into another. On the third wall was a small steel toilet unit and on the fourth was the entrance. It was nothing special.

“This is great,” Fleet gushed, dropping his case on the lower bunk and flopping down next to it, bouncing happily on the thin mattress.

“It’s nothing to get excited about, Mr. Fleet,” Tish told him, frowning a bit. “It’s just a bunk.”

“Yeah, but you had me thinking I’d be curled up in a corner of the cargo hold, huddled up on old rags,” he said. “And I was totally content with that. So, trust me, this is a most welcome and unexpected surprise.”

Tish was shocked at the change in Fleet. He’d hovered nervously behind her as they left New Denver, fingers anxiously tapping against his steel case as she gave the departure codes to space traffic control.

But now that they were safely out of the planet’s gravitational pull and New Denver was fading into a green speck behind them, Fleet’s entire demeanor had changed. His boyish grin was bright white against his azure skin and hard to resist.

Tish wasn’t sure what the deal was with the Trionese, but she hadn’t seen a fully-grown human male smile like that in years. Most of the humans she still knew were officers in the IA, like Lennox, and IA officers weren’t known for their smiles, or senses of humor. They were, however, known for their brains, bravery, and boldness.

It was Lennox’s boldness that first attracted Tish to him, the way he’d come up to her in a dingy spaceport bar in Aurora City and asked to buy her a drink. He’d been a cadet then, on a weekend leave from IA basic training, and Tish had been her father’s first mate on The Carrion.

His bravery and brains were pretty great, too, but Tish had found out about those much, much later. In the bar that night, the second thing about Lennox that Tish noticed had nothing at all to do with inner qualities. It was his outer qualities that drew her to him: smooth, pale skin; wavy blonde hair; sparkling blue eyes. Lennox looked like a poster for IA enlistment or colonist recruitment. He was a perfect specimen of an Earthling.

Tish’s father wasn’t thrilled that she’d started dating an IA man—he hadn’t lived long enough to see them get engaged, although Tish could only imagine how her father would have reacted to that news—but had given his approval once Tish told him, promised him, that she would never, not in a million light years, give up The Carrion.

And here she was: a civilian engaged to an IA comptroller, a captain with no crew, with a cargo hold holding barely any cargo and with a passenger on a ship that didn’t take passengers.

How did it get this bad? Tish thought to herself as she slid Fleet’s cabin door closed, leaving the Trion to his own devices as she headed back to the cabin to start the hyper-speed launch.

There was a message waiting for her back in the cockpit, a blinking red light grabbing her attention.

“Fuck, what now?” she groaned, yawning as she pulled up her message box on the view screen.

Fleet’s face filled the screen in front of her, his blue skin and bright gold eyes vivid on the Plasma-viewer. The Carrion was hopelessly outdated with their tech and view screens, but even the crappy quality of the cockpit’s screen left no doubt in Tish’ mind that this was definitely a picture of Fleet.

There were two photos on the screen: one facing front, one turned sideways, a profile.

Fleet wasn’t dressed in his casual grey hoodie and black canvas jacket. In these images, he was wearing a crisp white lab coat and a pair of thick, black-rimmed spectacles. He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t unhappy either, just…neutral.

“What the holy hell?” Tish whispered, leaning closer to the view screen to read the text printed beneath Fleet’s photo.

 

WANTED

Doctor Fleet U’rbech

Race: Trion

Height: 6’2

Skin: Blue

Eyes: Gold

Hair: None

If spotted, please report to IA Security IMMEDIATELY

Do not engage

This male is considered unstable and dangerous

 

“They’re calling me dangerous, huh?”

Tish whipped around, long braids flying. Fleet stood in the doorway, a pinched smile on his handsome blue face.

“Are you dangerous, Mr. Fleet?” she asked, glancing surreptitiously around the cockpit for anything she could use as a weapon. Cargo pilots didn’t carry blasters as a general rule, and her only one was stowed away in her bunk. Lennox always reprimanded her for this, insisting that Tish carry it on her person at all times, but she always ignored him. Now she was beginning to wish she hadn’t.

Fleet raised both hands up, golden eyes serious.

“I’m not,” he assured her.

“Then what the hell is this IA bulletin about, Mr. Fleet?” Tish asked, glaring.

Fleet sighed and slumped against the doorway.

“I needed to leave New Denver and the IA…disagreed with my choice,” he explained without explaining anything.

Another bulletin pinged in, filling the view screen in front of Tish and Fleet.

 

REWARD

20,000 credits

 

Twenty thousand credits?

“That’s quite a sum,” Tish said, coolly.

“And not even half of what I’ve offered you, Captain.”

Tish sighed. “Look, Fleet, I’m already in a lot of hot water with the IA. I can’t smuggle a fugitive off of—”

“But you already have,” he replied.

It was true. By accepting this passenger, Tish had already implicated herself in his escape, already gone against an Intergalactic Alliance rule. All ships were to be used strictly for their licensed purpose. If the IA found out that a cargo ship took on a passenger, not to mention a wanted fugitive, Tish was facing a mountain of fines, if not a complete revocation of her license.

“Look, Fleet—” she began.

There was a quick rustle of fabric and Fleet pulled out a large, black blaster, the barrel pointed squarely at Tish.

“I’m not dangerous,” he said. “But I am armed, Captain. And I’m going to have to insist that you take me to Canasis.”

 

***

 

Tish froze, her dark brown eyes staring down the barrel of Fleet’s blaster.

“You don’t want to do this, Mr. Fleet,” she said, trying desperately to keep her voice from shaking. “My fiancé is an AC with the IA and he’ll be—”

“I’m not going to do anything, Captain,” Fleet insisted, but he didn’t lower his weapon. “All I’m asking is that you hold up your end of the bargain, and I’ll hold up mine. You fly, I pay. It’s as simple as that.”

Tish’s reply was cut off by yet another message pinging in on the view screen, but this wasn’t a single alarm indicating a new message. This was a series of insistent beeps, signaling an incoming com call.

She could only think of one person who would be messaging her right now: Lennox. Shit.

“You should probably answer that,” Fleet told her, smiling grimly. “But be careful, Captain. I’m going to be right here, right off camera, and I’ll have my blaster with me. Please don’t do anything foolish.”

Tish shuddered. She could answer the call, shout to Lennox to help and then what? Fleet could blast her into pieces before Lennox had time to call in IA backup. They would get their man, probably, but she’d still be a heap of ash on the cockpit floor.

“I’ll keep my mouth shut,” she said, finally. “But after this call, we’re going to have a long talk, you and me.”

Fleet only nodded in response, then brushed past her to hide himself from the view screen’s camera. He did not lower his weapon.

The call was still beeping insistently. Tish pressed the red “answer call” button and steeled herself as Lennox’s image flickered onto the screen.

“Tish!” Lennox gushed, as his screen caught sight of her. “Thank god, I was so worried.”

“About what?” she replied, hoping that she sounded relaxed and even. It wouldn’t do any good to get Lennox worried before she figured out how to handle this situation.

“You’re just leaving New Denver, right?” Lennox asked, his lovely grey eyes full of worry. “Did you see the bulletin that just went out?”

“I saw it, but didn’t give it much thought,” Tish lied. “It looked like a passenger thing and I’ve just got half a hold of crappy cargo.”

Lennox sighed. “The brass here say that the guy is crafty, Tish. I was worried he might have stowed away or something. Have you checked your hold?”

“I’m fine, Lennox, I swear. It’s nothing but crates of colony supplies heading to Canasis. The life scans didn’t show anything when I loaded them in.”

“Okay, okay,” Lennox said, the worry not completely disappearing from his face. “Everyone here is in a panic about this guy and I, I just wanted to make sure my girl was safe.”

“I’m fine,” Tish repeated again, for emphasis. She bristled slightly at the term girl. She really hated that. “I’m fine. I got out before I even knew there was a fugitive on the loose, Lennox.”

“Okay,” he said. “Well, I’m just glad you’re safe. No one will say what this guy did, but the higher ups want to get their hands on him pretty badly.”

“I’ll give a shout if I hear anything, love, but I’m pretty sure there’ll be nothing to shout about,” she said. “I’m about to hit hyper-speed and I’ll be on Canasis in just a few days. I doubt any of this business will follow me there.”

“Well, stay safe,” Lennox said. “And if you hear anything, anything, Tish, you call me, okay?”

“I promise, Lennox,” Tish replied. “You have my word.”

Lennox smiled for the first time on this call, but his eyes were still dark with worry. “After you drop your cargo at Canasis, maybe you can drop by Earth Two for a few days—”

“Lennox—”

“You deserve a break, Tish,” Lennox insisted. “You’ve been working so hard—”

“Because I’m broke, love!” Tish practically shouted. She and Lennox had this discussion every quarter or so, and Tish knew exactly where this conversation was headed.

“There’s a position opening up in the IA fleet and I was thinking…”

Tish stopped listening. Lennox kept begging her to enlist, join the IA, but something about it always felt wrong, as if she would be doing a disservice to her father’s memory if she abandoned The Carrion, his beloved ship.

As Lennox prattled on about job opportunities, Tish glanced at Fleet, standing just out of view of the cams. His blue face was serious and his golden eyes locked on her, blaster still pointed directly at her heart.

“…and I know I could get you a great appointment, love,” Lennox finished, smiling tightly. “It would really be wonderful if we were working for the IA together. The IA loves couples in their workforce.”

Tish grimaced. The IA did love couples in their workforce, it helped them keep control over the population. The more people you held in your sway, the easier it was to keep the peace across the galaxy. Tish wasn’t opposed to peace, but something about the IA’s methods made her squirm.

She slid one lithe, brown hand under the dash, jiggling a loose wire and the view screen flickered for a moment. Tish moved the wire again and the screen static increased.

“I think I’ve hit a bad patch of connectivity,” she lied.

“What?” Lennox’s grainy image responded, his voice cutting in and out as Tish fiddled with the wire. “Wha—?”

“I’m sorry, Lennox! I think I need to sign off before things get worse. I love you.”

Lennox’s image frowned. “Okay, well, I love you, t—”

Tish yanked the wire and the screen burst into static. She hit the “disconnect call” button and slumped into her chair.

“That was well done,” Fleet said, his voice coming from behind her. “Thank you, Captain.”

“I don’t think you really left me much choice, Mr. Fleet,” Tish growled.

“I know and I’m sorry,” Fleet replied. “But it is of the utmost importance that I get home without any IA interference.”

“How do you know that I won’t call for help the second you walk out of this cockpit?”

Fleet smiled, his grin still handsome in his seriousness, and tapped what appeared to be a button on the pocket of his black canvas jacket. “Because I just took a recording of your exchange with your fiancé. This is a camera. It’s transmitting to my contact on Canasis right now. If you turn me in, I turn that video over to the IA. You can get into a lot of trouble for lying to an IA officer while harboring a fugitive, Captain.”

“You bastard—”

“I need to get to Canasis and I can’t let anything get in my way,” he replied, finally holstering his blaster under his arm. Tish couldn’t believe she didn’t even think about patting him down before letting him on her ship.

“Now, Captain,” Fleet continued, “if you wouldn’t mind setting a hyper-speed jump to Canasis, I’ll just confirm that it’s locked in and get out of your hair.”

Tish punched in a code and then swiveled her chair to face Fleet. “There, it’s done. We’ll be on Canasis in five days.”

Fleet nodded once, turned to go, then turned back to face Tish.

“Well, then. I guess we have five days to get to know one another, Captain Williams.”

“I guess we do,” Tish muttered at his back, but Fleet was already out of the cockpit and halfway down the hall. “I guess we do.”

 

***

 

The mess hall wasn’t much of a hall at all, more like a grubby alcove filled with a small refrigeration unit, a ration microwaver, a hot pot for H2O, and a narrow steel table with a few stools around it.

When Tish arrived to prepare her dinner—a packet of dried protein and a ration of coffee—she found Fleet already there, happily humming to himself as he rummaged through the small ‘fridge unit.

“Your provisions are shockingly sparse, Captain,” he informed her, without even looking up.

“Well, as I’ve pointed out several times, Mr. Fleet, this isn’t a passenger ship.”

“But surely you’ve got to eat, Captain,” Fleet replied, emerging with a half-empty jar of marinara and a bottle of Uranian water. “How on Earth Two are you able to sustain yourself with this?”

“Rations are for sustenance, not flavor,” she snapped, yanking the water out of Fleet’s hand. “And give me this. I’m saving it for a special occasion. If you want water, there’s a tap that’ll pour you something drinkable.”

Fleet raised one eyebrow—it was a slightly golden hue and contrasted beautifully with his azure blue skin—and looked at Tish quizzically. “I was actually thinking about making dinner. For both of us.”

“Wow, you can’t fly yourself to Canasis, but you can cook. Color me shocked.”

“What color is shocked, Captain?”

Tish rolled her eyes. “Pink, I guess.”

Fleet nodded. “Ah, makes sense. Although, on Trionese folks, like myself, I suppose it might be more purple.”

“Well, when you flush purple, I’ll know I’ve managed to shock you then, Mr. Fleet.”

Tish snatched the half-empty jar of sauce from Fleet and crammed it back into the sadly under-stocked ‘fridge unit. “Excuse me, but the mess hall is for crew only. If you’d be so good as to wait in your bunk, I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready.”

“I’m happy to help—”

“I’m perfectly capable of rehydrating protein packs on my own, Mr. Fleet,” Tish snapped. “Now go wait in your bunk. Please.”

“Fine,” Fleet agreed and backed slowly out of the tiny mess hall. “But if you need any help—”

“I won’t.”

“But if you do—”

“I said I won’t, Mr. Fleet,” Tish repeated.

Finally, Fleet took his cue and left her in peace.

The moment he was out of sight, Tish sank down to the floor and collapsed against a steel cabinet. “I’m a so fucked,” she moaned.

A myriad of options flooded through her head, but each was worse than the last. She could turn Fleet in and risk getting herself in a heap of trouble, she could carry him to Canasis and risk getting herself into an even bigger heap of trouble.

Or.

Or she could alter their course, drop him off at some backwater moon and pretend the whole thing never happened.

That could be doable.

Tish quickly programmed the microwaver to reheat and rehydrate two packets of protein rations and then stuck her head into the corridor. The coast was clear. By some miracle, Fleet had followed her orders and actually returned to his bunk.

This passenger was turning out to be more trouble than he was worth, even if he was worth fifty thousand credits, more money than Tish had ever seen in her life. She should have trusted her gut back in New Denver, when every single alarm had been alerting her that this passenger was a bad idea.

She brought this on herself, though, and now she had to fix it.

When Tish arrived back in the cockpit, however, she was dismayed to see a set of legs emerging from under the console. The pants—dull grey utility pants—were riding up enough to expose blue flesh around the ankle. Even without this clue, Tish would have known it was Fleet. There was no one else on the ship. But she didn’t know what he was up to.

“Excuse me, Mr. Fleet?” she snarled.

With a grunt, Fleet emerged from beneath the console, dull grey dust clinging to his hoodie and face. “Ah! Captain! Is dinner ready?”

“What do you think you’re doing under there?”

Fleet grinned. “Well, I had an inkling that you might want to make a stop on our journey to Canasis, so…”

“So, what?”

“So, I may have put a course lock on your ship.”

“You what?” Tish sputtered. “You can’t put a course lock on a Neptune IV class freighter. These were built before that technology existed.”

“Not from the primary controls,” Fleet said, “But you can do it if you get in there and do some rewiring. So, that’s what I did.”

The bulletin flashed through Tish’s mind, reminding her of something she’d missed during all the excitement. “You’re a doctor.”

“Indeed I am, Captain.” Fleet said.

“A doctor of what, exactly?” Tish asked.

“I hold triple PhDs in Interplanetary Communications, Advanced Biomechanics and Elemental Science.”

“I don’t know what any of those are,” Tish said.

“Let’s just put it this way: I’m very smart and, somewhere in there, I learned how to rewire a console,” Fleet replied.

“Of course you did.”

An alarm screamed and red, flashing light filled the cabin as a boom sounded deep within the cargo bay and the ship shook.

Fleet’s eyes widened. “What was that?”

“You didn’t happen to learn how to un-rewire a nav console, did you Dr. Fleet?”

Fleet shook his head. “And why would we need to do that?”

“Because,” Tish shouted, over the blaring alarm. “That might be helpful if we’re going to survive this asteroid field.”

 

***

 

“What do you mean ‘asteroid field’?” Fleet yelled, as Tish pushed past him to her chair stationed at the nav console. “Can’t we just hyper-speed through it?”

“Not in a ship this old,” she said, punching at buttons and pulling a lever to rip the ship back to normal travel speed. “The hull can’t handle the impact at such a high speed, if we take a direct hit from a big enough asteroid, it’ll blow the shields and we’re as good as dead out here.”

“What do we do?” Fleet asked, hovering nervously behind her.

“We do nothing, Mr. Fleet,” Tish snapped. “I fly us through this mess and you go back to your bunk and pray to whatever god you worship back on Trion.”

“We actually worship science—”

“Not the time for a lecture on interplanetary religion, Doc,” Tish said.

It was bad. Normally, Tish would set a new route and burst the ship well out of range of the asteroid field, but a nav console rewire would force them to keep to their course. They could veer off by a parsec or two, but the rewire wouldn’t give them enough maneuvering room to fully escape the range of the field.

They were going to have to dodge each asteroid.

“Sweet baby Jesus,” Tish began to pray to her Earth deity as she whipped the controls starboard to avoid a massive, crater-filled asteroid looming in front of them.

There was a thud and muffled curse from behind her.

“I thought I told you to go to your bunk, Dr. Fleet.”

“I’d feel better staying up here, Captain.”

Tish rolled her eyes, but didn’t have the time or attention to argue with him.

“Well, if you’re going to stay in the cockpit, strap yourself into a jump seat. Things are going to get a bit…bumpy.”

She whipped the controls port, then starboard, then up abruptly. Judging from the lack of thumps and bumps from behind her, it appeared that Fleet had finally heeded her advice and strapped himself in.

The asteroids were flying at them, fast and furious. Tish shook her head as she manned the controls, maneuvering her cumbersome freighter around each deadly hunk of rock.

She hadn’t been to Canasis in a while, but she definitely didn’t remember there being an asteroid field along her regular route. Where the hell had this come from?

Behind her, Fleet was breathing deeply, inhaling and exhaling in long, slow breathes.

“What the hell are you doing back there, Doc?”

“Just keeping myself calm, Captain,” Fleet replied, his voice unnaturally low and steady. “Breathing helps in stressful situations. You should give it a try.”

“I’m doing just fine on my own, Dr. Fleet,” Tish said, shoving the controls forward to dive The Carrion under a particularly large asteroid.

“Are you, Captain?”

“Of course I—oh.” Tish realized what Fleet was referring to: an enormous hunk of jagged rock had appeared before them, so large it blocked out the blackness of space all around them. Tish could only see rock. “Shit.”

“Take a deep breath, Captain,” Fleet advised from behind her.

Tish did. Somehow, she did feel a little better.

“Now exhale.”

She exhaled, and her hands felt steadier on the controls.

“A rock that large might have its own gravitational pull,” Fleet said.

He was right. If The Carrion got too close, the asteroid could pull the ship into it. There was no way that the old freighter could tug itself out of that situation. Tish had to avoid getting in range of the asteroid’s gravitational pull at all costs.

“Talk to me, Dr. Fleet,” she said, through gritted teeth.

“What?”

“Talk to me, please,” Tish said. “To keep me calm, keep me grounded while I fly us through this.”

“What do you want me to talk about?”

“Anything, Fleet! Just talk, okay?”

“Okay! Okay!”

Fleet began to speak, his voice low and soothing. Tish’s hands flew over the controls as he talked on and on. He told her about his planet, Trion, and the beauty it once held. Oceans, lakes, rivers, waterfalls. Trion was a water planet, he told her, and her surface was once covered with ninety percent oceans.

“But now,” Fleet said, as Tish finessed the controls to avoid a small asteroid hurtling by while still staying out of range of the massive, dangerous asteroid, “we’ve got less than ten percent water coverage on our surface.”

“How is that even possible?” Tish asked, her hands gripping the controls so tight that her knuckles were turning pale.

“The Intergalactic Alliance believes that all planets should share their resources,” Fleet explained. “Trion has been giving water to less fortunate systems for decades now and we’re almost tapped out.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Tish said. The Carrion whipped port, then starboard, then port again.

“It’s not,” Fleet agreed. “But when I make it home, if I make it home, I think I can fix it.”

“You’re that good, huh?”

“I am widely considered to be one of the top research scientists in the known universe, Captain Williams.”

“Then why are you running, doc?”

Tish could hear Fleet take a long inhale followed by an even longer, steadier exhalation. “Because the IA doesn’t like to share their toys, Captain.”

With one last thrust of the controls, The Carrion ducked under the looming asteroid, skimming beneath it with no noticeable shift in course.

They’d done it. They’d escaped the gravitational pull of the monstrous hunk of space rock.

Beyond the asteroid, the coast was clear. Nothing but black space loomed in front of The Carrion.

Behind Tish, Fleet let out a long, shuddering breath. Tish did the same, flipping a switch to autopilot as she leaned back in her chair, shaking.

“Captain?” asked Fleet. “When you have a moment, could you possibly give me a hand with this?”

Tish swiveled her chair to face him. Fleet’s blue hands were fluttering at the buckle of his jump seat, shaking too badly to properly unclasp the safety fastening.

“Sorry, let me help,” she said, suddenly embarrassed. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t like it was her job to assist passengers, she wasn’t even supposed to have any passengers. But the shaking of Fleet’s hands made her feel sorry for him.

Unbuckling her own belt, Tish got out of her chair, crossed the cabin toward Fleet, and knelt down beside him to get better access to the fastening. It wasn’t until she fumbled with the buckle that Tish realized her own hands were shaking.

“Here, I can do it,” Fleet offered, moving his hands down to assist. The back of his fingers brushed against Tish’s hand and she gasped as if struck by a small electric current.

“How did you do that?” she asked, eyes wide.

“Do what?” Fleet looked back at her, eyes wide.

“That shock,” Tish said. “When we touched. It was like electricity. Did you feel it?”

“I felt it,” Fleet said. “I didn’t know that you felt it.”

“Of course I felt it, doc. How did you do that? Is that some sort of Trionese defense mechanism? A species thing?”

Fleet shook his head. “The Trionese don’t have any sort of advanced evolutionary defense mechanisms. Other than the blue skin and a few other coloring issues, we’re basically the same as humans.”

“Then what was that?”

“I don’t know, Captain, I don’t know.”

 

***

 

Tish stumbled a few times as she escorted Fleet back to his bunk, her body not quite over the experience of dodging asteroids or the unexplained electric charge that passed between her and the scientist. She supposed that she could have let him make his own way back to his bunk, but she really didn’t want to be alone at the moment. Judging by the way he clutched her by the elbow as they walked down the corridor, neither did he.

When they reached Fleet’s cabin, the last one on the end, Tish realized that she was having a hard time letting him go.

“Captain?” Fleet asked, his voice tired. “I know that I asked a lot of you today, things that you didn’t want to do and I want you to know that…I’m sorry. I regret putting you in these circumstances.”

Tish nodded. “I know.”

“I mean it, Captain,” Fleet was adamant, his gold eyes almost bronze in the dim, flickering light of the corridor. “I’m not normally this brazen of a villain—”

“I didn’t call you a villain, Dr. Fleet—”

“I know, Captain, but I certainly feel like one,” Fleet sighed and released Tish’s arm. “I’ve never pulled a blaster on anyone before. I never even held one before yesterday. We don’t allow blasters on Trion, you know.”

Tish nodded. Trion was a peaceful place, a planet full of intellectuals and scientists. They had very little need of weaponry there. It must be nice.

“Why were you—?” Tish began, but The Carrion lurched suddenly, jerking as the engines settled into hyper-speed, and Tish, her knees still weak from the dash through the asteroid field, tumbled into Fleet. He reflexively wrapped his strong arms around her to keep her from falling over.

The Trionese male’s chest was firm and strangely warm under her fingers, his species’ natural body temperature was higher than a human’s. Tish briefly wondered what an IA scientist did to have a body like this. Most human lab rats she encountered were of the pasty pale variety, more slender than stacked.

“Are all Trionese this ripped?” she muttered, then stiffened at Fleet’s laugh. “Shit, did I say that out lout?”

She felt rather than saw Fleet nod. Tish was still wrapped in his arms, his chin resting to the side of her head. His nod rustled her black braids.

Tish knew that she should pull herself free, untangle herself from Fleet’s firm embrace and go back to her own bunk before she did something stupid. But she really, really didn’t want to.

“Captain?” Fleets voice was low and rough. “Maybe it’s just the adrenaline from the asteroid field but…can I—?”

Tish didn’t let Fleet finish the question. She turned her head the slightest bit and her lips were suddenly on his, their fullness pressing against the thin line of the alien man’s mouth.

He was warm, so warm, against her and Tish realized that the warmth wasn’t confined to her mouth. The entire front line of her body was pressed against his, her entire form was blazing from the heat of him.

Fleet’s arms tightened even more around her, locked her against him, as his tongue gently flicked against her full lips, silently asking permission.

Tish hummed a response and parted her lips slightly to allow Fleet’s eager tongue access.

Her hands explored the length of his taut arms, brushing up and down, reveling in the strength there.

“How are you so strong?” she gasped when Fleet pulled away briefly for air. “For a scientist?”

“We’re a seafaring race,” he laughed, stroking Tish’ black braids, thumb ghosting against her cheekbone. “We’ve evolved to be physically strong, even when we’ve been out of the water for a while.”

“How long is ‘a while,’ Fleet?” Tish asked.

“Two years,” he said, looking down at her with sad eyes. “I was drafted just over two years—”

“Drafted?” The Intergalactic Alliance wasn’t supposed to draft citizens. They only enlisted volunteers, they never pressed anyone into service against their will.

Or so we all thought.

“Captain, I’ll tell you my sad history sometime—anytime you want, actually—but, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d kind of like to go back to what we were just doing?”

Fleet didn’t need to ask twice. Tish pressed up against him, surprised at her need. This time, her tongue pressed into him, exploring, seeking, claiming. Her hands fumbled with the buttons of his jacket and Fleet hummed his consent against her mouth.

“This jacket is a fucking pain in the ass,” Tish muttered. “The IA needs to issue their staff better—”

The IA. IA officers. Lennox.

“Oh, shit,” Tish pulled back.

“What’s the matter, Captain?” Fleet looked rumpled and sexy as hell. A deep navy blue flush had settled on his cheeks, darkening his azure skin, and his bright golden eyes flickered with desire.

God, he’s beautiful, Tish thought, then pushed that back down to the deep recess of her brain as she straightened up and brushed off her flight suit.

“My apologies, Dr. Fleet,” Tish said. “I seem to have let a near-death experience gain control of my better judgment.”

“Tish—”

“I’m engaged, Doctor. To an IA Officer. I’m sorry that I behaved inappropriately,” her voice was clipped, official.

“Captain Williams, I felt something in that cockpit, something electric between us,” Fleet argued, grabbing her arm. Tish shook him off with a glare.

“That was a fluke, Dr. Fleet, an electrical charge from the asteroid field, or a wire got knocked loose and—”

“That’s bullshit and you know it, Captain.”

“There’s got to be a rational explanation—”

Fleet gripped her by both shoulders. “Captain Williams. Tish. I am a scientist. Probably the best in the universe, and I can tell you that what I experienced in that cockpit, what you experienced, has no scientific explanation. That was something special, something between us—”

Tish shook him off and took a step back, smiling wryly. “That’s what’s so great about the universe, right, Doctor?”

Fleet looked puzzled. “What?”

“Even though we know so much, and our scientists are so smart,” Tish could not keep the mocking tone out of her voice, “there’s still so much we don’t know. It’s still full of mystery.”

“Tish—”

“Good night, Dr. Fleet,” Tish snapped, turning on her heel and marching down the short hall toward her own cabin.

“Captain Williams!” Fleet called after her.

“I’ll see you in the mess tomorrow morning for breakfast at o-six-hundred hours, Dr. Flynn,” she said, without turning back. “Although don’t get your hopes up: it’s rehydrated protein packs. Again.”

Tish entered her cabin, slid the door shut behind her and collapsed in her bunk, wondering what the hell she was doing with her life?

 

***

 

The next morning, Tish rolled out of her bed and actually bothered to pull on a fresh flight suit. Ever since her crew dwindled and she was left alone, she didn’t much care about her appearance when she was in deep space. There wasn’t anyone around to see her and, if Lennox happened to call her on the com, well…the connection was usually grainy and he wouldn’t be able to tell that she’d been wearing the same rumpled flight suit for five or six days.

She splashed some water on her face and looked at herself in the mirror as she smoothed down her dark braids. “Girl, what are you doing?”

Her reflection didn’t answer back, but Tish already knew the answer to the question. She was trying to look presentable for Fleet, a man she’d pushed away only hours before.

“Seriously,” she asked again. “What the hell are you doing?”

Her reflection only glared back.

“This is one of the first signs of space madness, you know?” Tish said to herself as she pressed the panel and her cabin door slid open. “Talking to yourself.”

The hall was quiet. Tish had never realized how lonely she’d been aboard The Carrion, these past few months. She’d grown used to the quiet but now that she’d had Fleet’s company for less than a day, she was acutely aware of how alone she was.

“Speaking of Dr. Fleet,” Tish muttered as she reached the Trionese doctor’s cabin door and gave the pitted steel a brisk series of knocks. “Dr. Fleet? Breakfast will be ready shortly.”

No answer.

“Dr. Fleet?” Tish called again and was again met with only silence. “Shit…”

Tish pressed the keypad on the wall and Fleet’s door slid open, revealing nothing but an empty room with a neatly made bottom bunk.

Where the hell was he?

Tish’s eyes widened. “The cockpit!”

Her footsteps rang out sharply against the metal grating of the floor as Tish sprinted down the hall from the crew quarters to the cockpit.

Who knew how long Fleet hadn’t been in his cabin? Had he even slept? Or had he been up all night, fiddling with the console in the cockpit, redirecting The Carrion to who knows where?  Fleet was no pilot, he’d said so himself. What if he’d accidentally plotted their course into another asteroid field or the middle of a star?

Tish picked up speed and slid around the corner. The cockpit’s door stood ajar and there was…no one there.

“Dr. Fleet?” Tish called softly.

The control console was humming softly and the lights all looked to be blinking in their correct pattern. Fleet hadn’t been there at all.

“Dr. Fleet?” Tish called again, louder this time.

No answer.

The Carrion wasn’t a big ship. There were only so many places he could be. He wasn’t in his bunk, he wasn’t in the cockpit. Tish checked the tiny mess hall: empty, as well.

The Carrion had only one escape pod and that sounded an alarm when it was jettisoned. He hadn’t let in the pod.

There was only one place left where Dr. Fleet could be.

Tish entered the cargo bay silently. There, in the dim light, was Fleet. He was bent down, pulling a metal grate back into place over a small alcove in the floor of the bay. Smugglers holes, Tish’s father used to call those funny little nooks and crannies tucked all over the ship.

“Doctor?” Tish asked.

Fleet practically jumped out of his blue skin as he wheeled around, dropping the grate with a loud clank.

“Captain,” he replied, shooting her a wide, guilty grin. “Is breakfast ready?”

“What do you have under there, Dr. Fleet?” Tish strode toward him. Fleet stepped back and stood on the grate.

“Nothing that you need to worry about, Captain,” he said.

“If it’s on my ship, it’s my concern, Dr. Fleet.”

“I swear it’s—”

Tish pulled her blaster and aimed it squarely at Fleet’s chest. She’d learned her lesson yesterday and had made sure she’d had the weapon firmly holstered on her belt before she’d left her cabin.

“Stand aside, Dr. Fleet.”

Fleet put his hands up and sighed deeply before stepping off the grate.

“Pick up the grate, please,” Tish ordered.

“Captain, it’s really nothing—”

“You hid your cargo in a secret compartment, Dr. Fleet,” Tish snapped. “That was after you promised an exorbitant fee for your passage, pulled a blaster on me, and made me lie to an IA officer, not to mention my fiancé. I’d say this is definitely something.”

“You forgot to mention the part where you kissed me,” Fleet said, not moving to pick up the grate at all.

“I was in a heightened state from a near death experience,” Tish glared. “Sometimes adrenaline causes people to make terrible choices.”

“Humans, maybe, but not us Trionese,” Fleet stared at her levelly. Tish’s stomach flipped. She’d chalked her attraction to Fleet up to a simple physical reaction to the stress of the asteroid field and had assumed his reaction was caused by the same thing. That was, apparently, not the case.

Tish didn’t have time for this.

If Fleet had smuggled something off of New Denver, something valuable, then she could be in even bigger trouble than she was now.

“I said pick up the damn grate, Doctor,” Tish barked.

Fleet did. Finally.

Grunting, he squatted down and hoisted the grate up with his strong arms, then reached in and removed the steel case.

“Open it,” Tish ordered.

“Captain, it’s really not—”

“I said open it.”

With a quick snap of the clasps and a hiss of pressurized air releasing, Fleet opened the steel case and flipped the lid.

Tish didn’t know what she was expecting. Credits, perhaps. A rare gem or artifact. However, when she peered inside, she saw only…

“A marble?” Tish asked.

Nestled firmly inside the case, tucked into soft black foam, was a small sphere, no larger than the tip of Tish’s index finger. It could have been mistaken for a small diamond, but inside the clear glass orb were whirls of blue and whorls of green. This was clearly man made.

“What…what is this, doctor?”

Fleet sighed, then sat down on the cargo hold floor with a firm thud. “Water,” he said, finally.

“Water?” Tish didn’t understand. “What do you mean, water? You went to all this trouble to steal water? There’s water everywhere, Dr. Fleet.”

“Precisely, Captain,” Fleet said, looking up at her, his gaze pained. “There is water all over this universe. Except on Trion. The IA has been siphoning off our resources for decades, diverting our aquatic resources to planets across all the galaxies. But they are draining us dry, and they refuse to do anything to replace it.”

“That’s horrible,” Tish said, aghast.

“It is,” Fleet agreed. “I was working on this project back on Trion, manufacturing a water molecule from scratch and then rapidly multiplying it, when the IA found out about it. They raided my home and forced me into their employment.”

“They kidnapped you?” Tish asked. That wasn’t right. The IA didn’t do things like that.

“They called it “recruitment,” but, yeah. They kidnapped me.”

Tish stood silent, looking down at the swirling blue and green in the tiny, clear sphere, as Fleet explained further. The IA had forced him to continue his research under their watch for the past several years. He could have fudged it, could have failed on purpose, but his research was too important to his people. They needed him.

“So, I kept working,” Fleet said. “I used their labs to do my work, finish my project, but the whole time, I was also plotting my escape. As soon as the molecule was perfected, I packed it up and high-tailed it out of there.”

Tish frowned. “If you had so much time to plan your escape, then why did you come to me and The Carrion? You should have had plenty of time to book passage on a ship.”

Fleet had, in fact, done just that. But his ride had been arrested the night before Fleet’s escape—drunkenly brawling in one of New Denver’s less savory bars—and Fleet had found himself on the run and without a ride.

“So, there it is,” Fleet said. “Judge me if you like, call me a traitor, call me a thief. But everything I did, I did for my people, Captain.”

Tish looked at him. He was so lovely, sitting despondently on the floor of the cargo hold, his blue skin dark in the dim light. His broad shoulders were slumped and his head bowed.

She’d always equated bravery with the bold IA boys in uniform, strutting proudly through starports in their crisp black uniforms. Lennox had been a hero in her eyes, with his good looks and bold bravado.

But now Tish truly understood what a hero looked like. It had been right before her all this time.

“Captain?” Fleet asked. “What are you planning to do?”

Tish had forgotten that she’d had her blaster pointed at him this whole time. She quickly holstered it and offered her slim brown hand to Fleet.

“I’m planning to finish what we started last night, Doctor.”

 

***

 

Tish pulled Fleet into her cabin and pushed him down unceremoniously on the bed. While the other cabins all had bunk beds, the captain’s quarters had a single, full-sized bed. This was the first time that Tish had used it for anything other than sleeping. She couldn’t wait to see how it went.

Fleet tumbled onto the mattress and Tish followed after him, bracketing his hips with her lithe thighs, holding him underneath her.

“Captain, I thought you’d never ask.” Fleet grinned up at her, golden eyes shining.

Tish didn’t answer, just bent down and pulled off his white, standard issue undershirt. Good thing Fleet didn’t spend much time or effort getting dressed this morning. She really didn’t want waste time pulling layers off the sexy blue alien currently pinned beneath her.

Unfortunately, Tish had spent some time getting dressed this morning and her flight suit was annoyingly full body, with a zipper down the front. Fleet was already busy with the zipper, pulling the flight suit open and letting it pool around Tish’s thighs. Underneath, she wore her own standard issue white, A-line tank, and a pair of plain cotton panties.

It might have been nice to have had a slightly nicer pair of undergarments, but Fleet didn’t seem to mind. He yanked her tank over her head and paused for a moment, drinking in the beauty of her.

In fact, Fleet stared so long that Tish was becoming nervous.

“Is everything to your liking, Doctor?”

Fleet smiled up at her. “You’re perfect, Captain.”

He reached one hand up and traced an azure finger gently across her collarbone. Tish shuddered under his soft caress.

“You’re perfect,” Fleet repeated. “I hope you’ll go a little easy on me, Captain Williams. It’s been quite some time since I’ve been with a female.”

Tish blushed. It had been almost a year for her, almost a year since Lennox’s last planet-side leave. She pushed all thoughts of Lennox out of her mind. She needed to leave him, she knew that now. And she would end things with him as soon as she could, but now wasn’t the moment to think of a fiancé, whether he was going to be an ex- fiancé soon or not.

“How long?” she stuttered, hoping to cover her awkward silence with humor.

“I’ve never actually been with a human woman, Captain,” he admitted, glancing away, but not removing his blue hand from her warm brown skin.

“You’ve never—”

“No,” Fleet was quick to correct his mistake. “Tyrionese are actually required to mate annually once they come of age, so I’ve had…experience.”

Tish raised one eyebrow.

“Don’t look at me like that, Captain,” Fleet glared, playful. “We’re required to mate once a year and I did my duty as a Trionese citizen. But I’ve never done it for pleasure.”

Fleet shook his head. “Never,” he repeated. “Lots of my friends did, we’re not a completely cold race, but I was always too busy with my work to explore that option.”

“And now?” Tish asked.

“And now my work is done,” Fleet finished. “And I would really like to know how it feels to do this, this act, for enjoyment.”

“Doctor Fleet, I’d be more than happy to show you,” Tish leaned forward and kissed him, softly at first, then deeper once Fleet’s mouth surrendered to hers.

She felt Fleet stiffen against her as he moaned up into her mouth, his arousal evident in the hard swell of his crotch. Tish wriggled her hips experimentally and Fleet moaned again, the bulge trapped in his cargo pants swelling further.

Tish had never been with a Trion before, but if Fleet was an average specimen, she couldn’t imagine how this race wasn’t in high demand across the galaxy. She was a little afraid of what she’d find when she unzipped his trousers.

Fleet arched his back and ground his hips up against hers.

“Oh god, Tish,” he moaned. The use of her first name pleased Tish more than she could imagine. “I’m ready, I need you.”

She quickly pressed him into the mattress with the full weight of her body. “Not yet, Dr. Fleet, not yet. If you just go ahead and fuck me—”

Fleet moaned again, high and keening with need.

“Then you’d be missing out on the fun. You said you wanted to try this for fun, didn’t you?”

Fleet nodded, his golden eyes wide.

“Then let’s have some fun, shall we?”

Tish stroked his chiseled, handsome blue face with her brown fingers, then guided his mouth to her full breasts. Fleet, smart boy that he was, proved to be a quick study and quickly sucked one of her nipples, erect with excitement, into his eager mouth.

Tish cried out in pleasure, murmuring praise to him as Fleet suckled one nipple, then turned his attention to the other. His hands were never idle, cupping one firm breast in each hand, alternately squeezing and caressing in time with Tish’s rapid moans.

“You’re surprisingly good at this, Fleet,” she gasped, as he took one nipple firmly between his sharp white teeth.

“I’m a very good student,” he said, gazing up at her. “What else can you teach me, Tish?”

She could teach him, so, so many things. But for now, it was time to switch roles.

“Shhh, nothing for now,” Tish told him, then held up one hand as he began to protest. “Just lie back, Fleet. Lie back and enjoy.”

Trailing kisses down the firm blue flesh of his torso, Tish made her way down to the zip of his trousers. She hesitated for a moment before undoing the fly and tugging his pants down over his slim hips. A prominent bulge stood out in his underwear, straining against the thin white cotton, the light blue visible through the translucent fabric.

“Tish,” Fleet moaned, and she gently reached one hand up to stroke his chest, running her fingers over firm muscles of his abdomen. Her name tumbled out of his mouth, over and over, a litany of desire. “Tish, Tish, Tish…”

She took a deep breath and tugged the waistband of his briefs down and his cock sprang eagerly forward, larger and thicker than any she’d ever seen. Granted, Tish hadn’t warmed a lot of beds, but she’d had a lover or two before settling down with Lennox. No man she’d ever been with compared with the one spread underneath her now.

“Damn,” she muttered appreciatively.

“Is everything all right,” Fleet looked up at her, worried. “Am I—?”

“You’re perfect, Fleet” she assured him. “Now lie back and enjoy this, Doctor.”

Wrapping one hand around the thick blue shaft of Fleet’s cock, Tish pulled the tip to her warm, waiting lips. She hesitated for a moment, then wrapped her mouth around his head, enveloping him in the warm wetness of her.

Fleet cried out and then settled back on the mattress, trembling.

Tish took that as a positive sign. She pushed forward, forcing her mouth down around the incredible thickness of Fleet’s cock, licking desperately as she went to provide slickness for the enthusiastic cock-sucking that was about to ensue.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Tish took Fleet into her mouth until her lips were stretched around the wide base of his cock. A patch of golden hair covered the base and spread over a pair of testicles. Other than being larger and thicker than any human man she’d encountered, Fleet had basically the same anatomy as any of Tish’s other lovers.

She totally had this.

With one quick clench of her lips around his base, Tish began to pick up speed, pulling Fleet in and out of her eager mouth with ever-quickening speed.

“Tish!” the alien moaned, as she swallowed him down. “Tish! Oh, god…”

The pitch of Fleet’s cries were rising with each stroke of Tish’s clever mouth. He was close, she could tell. Experimentally, she scraped her teeth down the bottom of his cock as she slid his shaft out of her mouth and, with a strangled cry, Fleet came.

Tish pulled her mouth back, but wrapped her fist around his shaft to ease him through his release. Streaks of cum, more golden in hue than human semen, painted his abdomen, gilding the dark blue of his firm stomach.

She didn’t stop her hand until Fleet’s pleasure was complete, sliding it up with one last firm pull to coax the final bit of release out of him.

Fleet crumpled back on the bed, boneless, and Tish crawled up his body until she was nestled against his side, head tucked under his chin.

He shuddered beside her, convulsing every so often with small spasms of pleasure.

After what seemed to be years, Fleet spoke. “Well, Captain,” he said, “I have to admit: that was a lot of fun.”

Tish poked him in his side. “See, I told you,” she replied, laughing.

He looked down at her then, pupils still wide and dark with desire. “What about you, Tish?” he asked, genuinely concerned. “Was that fun for you?”

She smiled. “It was, Fleet, it really was.”

“I’m afraid I…released before we could couple,” he said, sounding a bit ashamed. “Is there anything that I can do to ensure that you also…have fun?”

“Don’t worry about it, Doctor,” Tish assured him. “We’ve got four more days before we get to Canasis. I think we’ve got plenty of time for you to make it up to me.”

 

***

 

Neither of them had intended to fall asleep, but the physical exertion of love-making and the sheer pleasure of being curled up with another warm body had quickly lulled both Tish and Fleet into a deep sleep, happily tangled up in one another.

It wasn’t until hours later, when the alarm system started blaring alerts at a high decibel shriek and flashing bright red alarm lights, that Tish and Fleet were abruptly wrenched from their peaceful slumber.

“What the hell?” Tish yelled, sitting up sharply and trying to rub the sleep out of her eyes.

“Well, captain,” Fleet said calmly, “it appears that we are having some sort of emergency.”

“Another one?” Tish moaned, rolling out bed and pulling on her flight suit. “Doc, you bring nothing but trouble, don’t you?”

“I don’t know about that,” said Fleet, voice muffled by the white undershirt he was yanking over his head. “I seem to remember you saying something quite different just a few hours ago.”

Tish rolled her eyes. “Man, you get laid once for fun and suddenly you’re the expert on recreational sex.”

“What can I say,” Fleet grinned. “I’m a scientist.”

“You’re arrogant,” Tish teased, tossing him one last smile before she dashed out to the cabin door.

Alarms blared and flashing red lights filled the hall as Tish sprinted toward the cockpit. The last time The Carrion had sounded a red alert, Tish’s father had been alive and captaining the ship. A mangy crew of Dirathian pirates had tried to board them, and the alarm had sounded the moment the pirate vessel had launched a grappling hook toward their hull.

Neptune IV class cargo freighters might not have the best shields, but they have truly excellent alarms systems. “Theft is worse than damage,” her father used to tell her.

But Tish hadn’t heard any thumps, didn’t feel a warning shot fired across their bow. In fact, The Carrion was moving smoothly through space, so smoothly, it was like it was being pulled by a…

“Tractor beam,” Tish whispered as she rounded the corner into the cockpit and screeched to halt in front of the view screen. The entire vast blackness of space was blocked from view by the hull of an IA frigate, which had The Carrion firmly locked in its tractor beam.

“Shit,” Tish hissed, futilely pounding at the controls. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Tish?” Fleet’s voice came from the doorway behind her. “What’s going on…”

His voice trailed off and he paled visibly, the tone of his skin lightening to that of a summer sky on Earth Two.

“It’s okay,” Tish assured him, her voice shaking with the lie. “We just need to get—”

A com call rang in on the view screen, a series of annoying beeps, one after another.

“Are you going to get that?” Fleet asked tentatively.

“I don’t know.” Tish had to be honest. She didn’t want to answer the call, but if she ignored it, their chances of being boarded by an inspection team went from iffy to one hundred percent.

“You should,” Fleet said. “I’ll…I don’t know, I’ll duck to the side.”

Tish nodded as Fleet tucked himself into the same position that they’d been the previous day: Tish in front of the view cam and Fleet out of sight. But yesterday seemed like a million years ago, and Tish and Fleet were no longer the same people.

She hit the red “receive call” button and straightened her jumpsuit. “Captain Williams here,” she announced to the person on the other side of the calling.

Lennox Lewis’ handsome face appeared on the view screen.

“Tish!” he practically crowed. “I’m so glad we found you. Help has arrived.”

“What do you mean “help,” Lennox?” she asked. “I’m just trying to make a delivery and you’re screwing up my schedule with this little routine space traffic stop.”

“Come on now, Tish,” Lennox replied. “Tish, Tish, Tish, I know you picked up a passenger on New Denver.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did. Our security cams caught footage of you two boarding The Carrion together just before I called in on you yesterday,” Lennox said. “You and a blue Trionese male, who we identified as the fugitive Dr. Fleet U’rbech

“Fuck” Tish muttered. A sudden movement caught her eye. Fleet was under the console, fiddling with a set of wires. He glanced up at her and put one finger to his lips.

Lennox narrowed his eyes. “Now, Tish, you know that passengers are illegal on cargo vessels. If we couple that with the fact that you’re harboring a fugitive from justice and that you lied to an IA officer—”

“I didn’t lie—”

“Who also happens to be your fiancé,” Lennox finished. “Well, Captain Leticia Williams, I think you might be in a whole lot of trouble.”

Tish took a deep breath as her brain spun wildly, trying to come up with a plausible lie. “I…”

“She was my hostage, Comptroller,” Fleet stepped forward into view of the cams and pressed the barrel of his blaster against Tish’s temple. “She still is my hostage, so I think it’s in your best interests, and hers, to release our ship from your tractor beam.”

Lennox said nothing while a crease of frustration appeared on his forehead.

“Please, Lennox,” Tish begged, playing her part. “If you don’t let The Carrion go, he’ll kill me, I swear he will. Please, Lennox, if you love me at all, you’ll release the tractor beam.”

Finally, after a long pause, Lennox spoke. “No,” he said simply.

“No?” Fleet and Tish answered in the same breath.

Lennox shrugged. “No. Shoot her. I don’t care. What I do care about is that molecule you’re carrying, Dr. U’rbech, and the formula that is tucked away inside that brilliant brain of yours. Blast her to bits if you want to, it doesn’t matter to me. We’ve still got you in our tractor beam and, in a few minutes, my men will be boarding your ship. It doesn’t matter if there are two prisoners or one.”

“Lennox—” Tish was aghast.

“Shut your mouth, Tish,” Lennox snapped. “If you’d have just done what I’d asked—joined the damned IA—then you wouldn’t be in this mess. You’d be over here, on the winning side, instead of facing a lifetime on a prison planet.”

Tish felt the barrel of the blaster leave her temple.

“All right,” Fleet said, setting the blaster on the console and putting both hands up in the air in a gesture of surrender before placing them flat on the console. “All right, I give myself up. Just… just let Captain Williams go. None of this was her fault.”

Tish looked at Fleet with wide eyes. He was just going to give himself up?

A flicker of movement at the console caught her eye. One of Fleet’s clever blue hands was readjusting the settings, turning knobs and resetting dials as his eyes stayed locked on Lennox’s image on the view screen.

“Doctor U’rbech, if you think I’m going to give Tish immunity after this, this betrayal, then you’re a stupider creature than I thought. In fact, I’m not sure which one I’m going to make suffer more—”

“Tish, hit the reverse thrusters!” Fleet shouted. “Now! Do it now!”

Tish flew forward, her hands grasping the lever for the thrusters and yanking it into reverse, hard. The Carrion blasted back, snapping the tractor beam.

“What the hell—” Lennox shouted, before his image dissolved into a burst of static.

“What did you do?” Tish shouted to Fleet, who was still fiddling with the controls.

“I diverted all main engine power to the front shields, built them up as much as I could,” Fleet said. “But the reverse thrusters have their own power source, so we can go backward as much as we want. We just can’t, you know, go forward.”

“So? What now?”

“Now, Captain Williams, you see how fast you can get us to hyper-speed.”

“But you course locked us!”

Fleet shook his head. “I undid that lock when I was down there a second ago. Hyper-speed, Tish! Now, now, now!”

Tish’s fingers flew over the keys, plotting coordinates and setting their destination, before she smashed the heel of her hand down on the “launch” button.

The IA cruiser disappeared from the view as a sea of trailing stars took their place.

The Carrion was safe.

 

***

 

Tish and Fleet ate a silent dinner together as The Carrion hurled through hyper-space, both too exhausted to say much.

There was no doubt that the IA would be blockading both Canasis and Trion, hoping to catch them again at the end of their journey. There was no way that Tish would be able to make her cargo delivery. Great. She could now add theft to the litany of charges against her.

“What are you going to do?” Fleet asked softly.

Tish looked at him through narrowed eyes. Can Trions do that?”

Fleet laughed, but it was hollow. “No, Tish, we’re not telepaths.”

“Then how did you—”

“It doesn’t take a telepath to know that you’re worried. It’s written all over your face.”

“Oh,” Tish said. “I guess we’ll just go to the coordinates I set. It’s a border moon, almost on the edge of the universe, but we should be safe there for a bit. I guess we can hole up there and think of a plan to get that molecule back to Trion.”

Fleet looked up, shocked. “You don’t have to come with me, Tish. I’ve asked you to commit too many crimes already. You don’t need to help me anymore. It isn’t your fight.”

“I know,” she said, boldly holding his gaze. “But it’s yours. And I mean to be by your side.”

“Tish—”

“You were right, Fleet,” she said, the words almost pouring out of her. “About the electricity. You were right. It wasn’t some, I don’t know, fluke static charge or something. It came from you and me. And I don’t know what it means, but I do know that I’ve never felt this way about another man, another male.”

Fleet reached one blue hand up and set into gently on Tish’s own hand. “I feel the same, Tish. And I’d be honored to have you by my side, wherever this journey takes us.”

Tish smiled over at him, raising one eyebrow playfully. “What if this journey takes us back to my cabin?”

A wide, white grin split Fleet’s handsome face. “Captain Williams, I thought you would never ask.”

Neither Tish nor Fleet waited to get back to the cabin before undressing. Instead, they shed their clothes on their way back down the hall, discarding garments as they took turns pressing each other up against the walls of the narrow hallway, eager to find one another again.

Once back in the cabin, however, Fleet took control, pushing Tish down on the bed and parting her legs.

“It looked like you were having fun down here earlier,” Fleet said. “I mean, our positions were reversed and I was having a, um, difficult time focusing but. You know. It looked enjoyable.”

“Fleet, it’s more enjoyable than you could possibly imagine.”

Fleet didn’t need to be told twice. He dove between Tish’s soft brown thighs, lapping eagerly at her slit. Tish felt his tongue press into her and she moaned, arching back until her head almost hit the mattress.

“Was that good?” Fleet murmured, still held firmly between her thighs.

“Uh-huh,” Tish agreed, unable to form proper words. The electricity that she and Fleet had felt in the cockpit was palpable again here, only much more so. She felt shivers coursing over her skin as his tongue pressed further into her dampness. She was so wet. When had she gotten so wet?

The pressure between her thighs intensified as Fleet slid one finger inside of her, then another. She was so full, so satisfied.

Tish gasped sharply. If she was this full with Fleet’s fingers, what would it be like when his enormous cock was filling her? She realized that she really wanted to find out.

“Fleet,” she breathed, but he was paying no attention. His attention was thoroughly set on pleasuring her with his fingers and tongue. “Fleet!”

He pulled back abruptly, gazing adoringly up at her. “Tish? Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s more than okay, Fleet,” she replied. “But, I’m ready. I’m ready to…you know?”

“Mate?” Fleet filled in, hopefully.

“I was gonna say ‘fuck’,” she replied, “but, yeah, we can say ‘mate,’ if you want.”

“I prefer your version, Captain. Let’s fuck, shall we?”

Fleet slid up her body, his weight on her solid and safe, and lined the head of his thick cock, wet with pre-come, up with Tish’s damp entrance. “Ready, Captain?”

“Ready, Doctor,” Tish replied. “Fuck me.”

With one thrust, Fleet was inside of her, his full length seated inside of Tish.

She trembled for a moment, shaking around the fullness. She’d never been taken like this, filled to the brim with a man who made her feel…electric.

“Oh, god, Tish,” Fleet was moaning above her, his eyes shining. “You feel so good, I can’t… I didn’t know it could be like this.”

“I didn’t either,” she admitted, wriggling her hips to massage the base of his thick cock. “But I like it, Fleet, I love it.”

She grasped his ass with both hands, admiring the way her ebony skin stood out against the bright azure of his taut, gleaming body. “I need more Fleet, please.”

He began to fuck her in earnest then, measuring firm, even strokes until Tish began to writhe on the mattress below him, crying out with pleasure at every thrust.

Tish no longer knew where she ended and Fleet began. They were entwined, entangled, one with the universe.

She could feel the heat of her release coiling in her belly as Fleet, unwavering, pounded into her.

“I’m close, Fleet,” she begged. “I’m so close. Please don’t stop.”

Fleet didn’t stop, if anything he increased his speed, shaking with the effort of pleasing her.

With one last, final thrust, he rammed into her and held her there as she came, quivering, around his thick blue cock. She could feel him coming, too, spending himself deep within her.

Finally, exhausted, Fleet collapsed on top of her, his body limp and spent.

Tish wrapped her arms tightly around him and stroked the smooth, blue skin of his back.

“Well, doctor?” she asked. “How was it on the other side of things?”

His body shook, whether from amusement or exhaustion, Tish couldn’t tell. Finally, he spoke. “Well, Captain Williams, I have to say that that was very enjoyable.”

“Well, that’s good,” she said. “Because we’ve got a long couple of months ahead of us. Just you and me, on the run.”

Fleet propped himself up and his elbows and gazed down at her, adoring. “Captain Williams,” he told her. “There’s nowhere else in the universe I’d rather be.”

“On a backwater moon?” Tish asked.

“With you.”

Tish paused, her hand stilling on the back of Fleet’s head. “Doctor?”she ventured, after a moment. “What if we didn’t go to that moon?”

Fleet pulled away, sitting up abruptly and gazing uncomprehendingly at Tish with his soft golden eyes. “I don’t understand, Captain? That IA is after us; they’re probably launching a full blown manhunt as we speak. Where else could we go?”

“That’s just the thing, Doctor,” Tish said. “There isn’t anywere in the galaxy at we can go, at least not with The Carrion.”

A low whistle escaped Fleet. “Are you really willing to do that? Sacrifice your ship, Captain?”

“If losing The Carrion means that your entire planet gets water, Doctor, then yes,” Tish answered. “Yes, I am.”

“But they aren’t even your people—”

“But they’re yours, Fleet,” Tish said, her big brown eyes shining. “And that’s enough for me, love.”

With a cry that was either laughter or joy or possibly a combination of them both, Fleet wrapped his strong blue arms around Tish and pulled her to him, peppering her with kisses. “You’re crazy,” he told her. “You know that, right, Captain?”

“I do,” she replied, smirking. “Now let’s go over my crazy plan, shall we?”

 

***

 

According to Tish, the plan relied on an escape pod. According to Fleet, the plan relied on an implausible series of events going exactly in their favor and absolutely nothing—not even the most minute of details—going wrong.

They both agreed the plan was insane.

“You ready, Doctor?” Tish asked, strapping the case containing the Fleet’s molecule into a small cargo net in The Carrion’s single escape pod.

Fleet nodded, his mouth set in a grimly determined line. He leaned back into the jump seat and fastened himself into the harness. “You’ll get here back here as soon as you can, right?”

“I promise,” Tish answered, leaning down and kissing him deeply. The plan was a long shot and she knew it. Might as well make every second count.

When she finally broke away, The Carrion’s nav system was alerting them that they’d be arriving at Trion in approximately five minutes.

“When the nav starts counting down to the next hyper-speed launch, get ready to jettison the pod, okay?” Tish instructed Fleet, then took a deep breath before continuing. “If I’m not back by the time the nav begins the ten second countdown, you close the hatch and launch the pod without me.”

Fleet’s eyes widened. “Tish, no—”

“Fleet, yes,” she snapped. “The IA has permission to destroy this ship on sight. If The Carrion can’t jump out of here before they get their guns locked on us, then the ship is toast. One of us needs to escape, okay?”

Fleet still looked dubious, but he nodded. “Okay,” he finally agreed.

The ship was humming as Tish walked down the corridor and entered her cockpit one last time. If everything went according to plan, they would jettison the escape pod and land on Trion undetected while the IA fleet chased The Carrion across the galaxy on a wild goose chase. If everything did not… well, the ship would be vaporized. Either way, Tish would never see her precious, ugly ship again.

“Approaching Trion in one minute,” the nav computer droned.

Tish straightened her shoulders and began punching in coordinates for a new hyper-speed jump. Once they entered into Trion’s outer atmosphere, she would initiate the jump and haul ass back to the cargo bay to join Fleet in the escape pod, jettisoning the pod before The Carrion entered hyper-speed or the IA blasted them to bits. She would have about thirty seconds to get from the cockpit and into the pod before the jump commenced.

“I hope I know what I’m doing,” Tish said.

“Approaching Trion in ten seconds,” the nav said. “Nine, eight, seven…”

The nav reached one and Trion—once a rich blue planet, now covered in ugly, grey patches of drought—appeared before The Carrion. More importantly, however, were the hundreds of IA ships that filled the space on all sides of the small planet.

“Shit,” Tish muttered.

The Plasma-viewer flickered to life in front of her, and a smug young IA officer sneered down at her. “Captain Williams, I can’t believe you were stupid enough to come to Trion. Comptroller Lennox bet that you’d try Canasis—he’s running the blockade there. Looks like he owes me twenty thousand credits for betting correctly,” the officer taunted. “Now, Captain: you have one minute to surrender your ship or we open fire. What do you say?”

Tish grinned up at the screen and raised one middle finger to the screen. “One minute, huh?” she said. “How about thirty seconds?”

The young officer looked confused. “Thirty sec—”

“Starting now!” Tish shouted and slammed her hand down on the hyper-speed launch.

She could hear the officer shouting at her over the Plasma-viewer as she sprinted down the hall, shooting one last look at her beloved cockpit.

“Hyper-speed launching initiating in thirty seconds,” the nav computer helpfully informed her as she pelted down the corridor at full speed. Tish whipped past the cabins, flew past the mess hall and finally reached the cargo bay.

“Twenty seconds,” said the nav.

Tish dashed across the hold and ducked inside the pod, pulling the hatch down after her.

“Fifteen seconds,” said the nav.

“You see?” she grinned over at Fleet. “I made it in plenty of time.”

“I should learn never to doubt you, Captain,” Fleet said, smiling back across the narrow pod. “Now let’s launch this, shall we?”

Tish pulled a lever and the escape pod broke free of The Carrion, drifting softly into space as the big cargo ship shuddered and disappeared in a burst of light. The IA ships, every single one of them, blinked out of sight as they entered hyper-speed to give chase, leaving Tish and Fleet to descend into Trion’s blue atmosphere completely undetected.

“Where are they going?” Fleet asked, when the last ship had vanished.

Tish unbuckled her harness and slid behind the small set of rudimentary controls. “Buullder,” she said lightly.

“Buullder?” Fleet frowned. “What’s there? Isn’t that a luxury planet?”

“It sure is,” Tish said. “A luxury planet where a certain Comptroller Lennox Lewis has a home. I might have set The Carrion’s nav computer to land exactly on the roof of Lennox’s house.”

“But the IA has orders to shoot?” Fleet said.

“Exactly,” Tish smirked. “It’s unfortunate for Comptroller Lewis but, hey, it’s all in the pursuit of a fugitive, right?”

Fleet shook his head and laughed. “You are something else, Captain Williams.”

Tish looked over at him, her big brown eyes tinged with worry. “Do you think your people will mind me, Fleet? I mean, I’m not—”

“You’re perfect, Tish,” Fleet told her. “They’ll love you.”

“But what if they don’t?” Tish asked, easing the small pod through the atmosphere and breaking into Trion’s airspace. The world was vast beneath them, but Tish aimed for the largest visible mass of land, then honed in on what Fleet informed her was the capitol city.

“They will,” Fleet insisted. “They’re already welcoming you. Look.”

He pointed one graceful finger at the rapidly approaching planet below. A mass of bodies was gathering in the streets of the capitol.

“Are they greeting us?” Tish wondered. “How do they--?”

“Trions know things, Tish,” Fleet told her.

“I thought you said Trions were telepathic,” she glared.

“We’re not,” he replied. “We just have really good security measures around our planet. They know exactly who is on this escape pod, Tish.”

“And?”

“And,” Fleet said. “I think they’re excited to meet you.”

Tish looked down at the faces in the crowd, which were finally visible as the pod began to touch down. Each blue face was smiling and waving, shouting and welcoming them to Trion.

Fleet slid his hand into Tish’s and smiled down at their entwined fingers, blue and brown.

Tish gave him a quick squeeze and then landed their craft on Trion, Fleet’s home. Her new home.

 

 

THE END