CHAPTERONE
Maureen woke with a pounding headache. A headache, and the odd sensation of floating.
“What the hell?” she grumbled, forcing her eyes to open, wincing at the sight of the flickering emergency lights assailing her senses.
She lifted her hand with a slosh.
Water.
This was not good.
“Fuck!” she exclaimed, her arms thrashing on instinct in the slowly rising murky tide.
Maureen lunged out of the bunk in a flash, grateful her feet found the deck beneath her in the waist-deep water. The compartment was mostly intact from what she could see as her vision adjusted to the dimmed, flashing lights.
Adrenaline had taken the pain right out of her head. Fight or flight mode could do that. If she survived—whenshe survived—that ache would have plenty of time to make a return visit.
She looked around at the floating debris. Water had come into the room somehow, and it had lifted anything not bolted down.
Including the two bodies floating at the far end, their corpses bumping lazily into the walls as a small current pushed them in circles. One had a familiar shape. Humanoid, but its skin was deep red. She couldn’t tell if it was one she had known, but judging by the unnatural angle of its neck, it had met its end quickly.
The other was a pale-yellow creature with what looked like tiny waterlogged feathers covering its body instead of hair. The violence of its demise was clear and the sight made her gag. Maureen forced her bile down and sloshed her way across the chamber. There had been others in the compartment. Where were they?
“Fuck!” she blurted as something brushed her leg.
It had been small. A fish, she hoped. Or whatever this alien world’s equivalent was.
“There’s a break in the hull,” she realized. “Not a small one either if that thing could make it in here. That means—”
A dark form lurched up out of the water with a splash. On instinct, Maureen swung as hard as she could, her fist meeting hard flesh.
“Please, do not do that,” a familiar voice said.
“Bodok?” she asked, her eyes straining in the dim light.
“Yes.”
“What happened? Where are we? Where are the others?”
He placed his hand on her arm reassuringly. Even in the cool water, his body radiated heat.
“Later. Right now you must swim. Do you know how?”
“Do I know how to swim? Are you kidding?”
“Some races avoid water. It is a perfectly normal question.”
A slightly panicked laugh escaped Maureen’s lips. The stress was getting to her. That, and the fear of drowning. “Yes, I can swim.”
“Good,” he said, his grip loosening. A moment later he took her hand in his own. “You will need to hold your breath. I will help you navigate the egress.”
“Wait, the what, now?”
“The flooring is buckled and torn open near that doorway. We cannot exit any other way. I have already pulled the two other survivors to safety. Their injuries prevented them from doing so without assistance.”
“Humans?”
“No. But we can discuss this once we are clear. The compartment landed relatively intact, but we touched down in a marshy lake and with the hull breaches it is slowly sinking.”
