Adrift Collection by T J Land

Adrift Collection by T J Land

Author:T J Land [Land, T J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, scifi, Gay, Lgbt, bisexual, menage, transgender, Asexual
Publisher: NineStar Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter Two

He could smell smoke. By the time they reached G deck, he could see it, a black cloud filling up the corridor. The door to the engine room was open, although it didn’t seem to have been damaged by whatever had taken place beyond it. Inside, red lights were flashing, and the smoke was so dense the captain couldn’t see where it was coming from, much less how bad the damage was.

Zachery, knowing the engine room like the back of his hand, found his way to his station despite the smoke and started barking questions at the ship’s audio interface program. As he did, the captain heard a voice coming from somewhere in the surrounding miasma.

“Zach? That you, man?”

“Rick?” shouted the captain, making his way towards the voice. “Where are you?”

“Over here. On the floor. Shit, I think I’m bleeding,” Rick called out and coughed.

“Keep talking. I’m coming towards you now,” said the captain. His eyes and throat were stinging. “Where are you bleeding?”

“My hand and…I think, my face? I can’t tell. My head fucking hurts.”

The smoke was so thick in this section of the room the captain ended up almost stepping on him. He was lying against the wall, evidently having been thrown back against it, his right hand cradled in his lap and his clothes singed.

“Hi, Captain,” he said, smiling weakly. The left side of his face was covered in blood, most of which issued from a cut on his scalp—although, to the captain’s disquiet, some seemed to be leaking from the vicinity of his left eye, which was squeezed shut. “How’s it going?”

“All the better for seeing you.” The captain knelt down and checked him for serious injuries before picking him up.

By the time they reached Zachery, the alarms had stopped blaring, and the smoke seemed to be dissipating. The engineer took one look at Rick and went several shades paler.

“Jesus, kid, what happened to you?”

“I got blown up,” Rick croaked.

“Yeah, I see that. What were you doing down here, dummy?”

“Looking for you, asshole. Wanted to let you know I’ve got a new batch of w… of fresh, healthy vegetables,” Rick amended, glancing up at the captain.

“What seems to be the problem, Mister Halberstam?”

Zachery shook his head, patting the control panel as though The Prayer were a sickly pet. “Can’t tell you that until I shut her down and get up inside her. She’s stable for now. The antimatter generator’s working fine, so there’s no danger of us all being oblit…”

“Captain!” came Antoine’s voice over the comm. “Where are you? Something’s happened to the ship. We’ve started descending.”

Rubbing his chin, Zachery said, “Seriously? Huh. That’s weird. The anti-grav systems are still operating, and there’s nothing wrong with…”

“Zachery,” the captain interrupted, “my ship appears to be losing altitude. It is logical to conclude that if this state of affairs continues, it will crash-land. Regardless of the root of this crisis, do you have a solution to the immediate problem?”

Zachery blew out his cheeks. “Not really, Captain. Her emergency systems were one of the things I shut down to make sure she doesn’t explode again.



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