Jarmuk looked at the nav screen and realize that the thing had finally gone haywire amidst the swirling storm. The booming sound had been the rover running into the rough, rocky surface just off the road.

  “Alright,” Jarmuk said to himself through gritted teeth. “Time to pay attention and do this from memory.”

  Jarmuk steered the rover back onto the road and pushed it to maximum acceleration once again. He could not make any mistakes. Time was running short, and he needed to be at the top of his game—not only for himself and for Zocrone, but also for Maisie. The protective instincts rising within him grew stronger, and he knew that failure was not an option. He had to save Maisie. She was the most intoxicatingly beautiful woman he’d ever met. His sudden obsession with her didn’t exactly make sense right now, but it didn’t matter. Sense was not as important as survival, and Jarmuk was going to make sure that he and Maisie survived.

  Chapter Three

  Maisie stared straight ahead at the wall of red dust that filled her view. She had been stealing glances at the weather screen, but she stopped doing that about ten minutes ago. The reality of what she saw made her stomach do nervous flip-flops. On the outside, she did her best to remain calm. But on the inside, she was screaming. She had never wanted to run and hide so badly in her entire life, but there was nowhere to run to.

  The super-tornado was coming for them.

  Jarmuk had not said anything for several minutes. Instead, he frowned down at the rover’s console, steering the vehicle this way and that from memory. The nav screen had gone down almost at the very beginning of this crazy journey, and now Jarmuk was running them blindly through the storm. At least, he looked like he was running blind. But Maisie could tell by the concentration on his handsome blue face that he was working off a mental map. She hoped that map was accurate, because if not, they were going to die today. There was no way around that.

  She would have been a dead woman already if he hadn’t insisted on staying with the damaged rover. There’s no way she would have known how to drive this thing back to the mines, and driving it toward Zocrone would have been a complete suicide mission. She’d always thought of Jarmuk as the goofball in Daxar’s group—the one who never took anything seriously. But apparently he took his sense of honor and duty seriously. Otherwise, he never would have insisted on remaining behind in this death trap.

  Maisie glanced over at him, resisting the urge to ask him how much further they had to go. She didn’t want to break his concentration right now, when she could tell that every second counted. So instead of talking to him, she admired his good looks. She could stare at him right now without his noticing, since he was so focused on steering the rover. And staring at a handsome blue alien was much nicer than staring out the window at a deadly storm.

  Much of his face was obscured by his helmet, but she could see his eyes and a bit of his cheekbones. His eyes were the typical fog gray color that all the Zocronian eyes shared. Maisie knew by now that that gray color could deepen all the way to pitch black if a Zocronian got emotional enough about something. Anger caused their eyes to darken the fastest, but fear, extreme happiness, and even love or lust could do the trick. It made Maisie feel better to see that Jarmuk’s eyes weren’t black right now. That meant that he couldn’t have been too scared himself, right? And if he wasn’t scared, then she should assume that things were under control.

  She took a deep breath to calm herself, then made the mistake of looking down at the weather screen again.

  Shit. Any feelings of calm disappeared in an instant. The edges of the super-tornado were practically right on top of the rover now. No wonder it was impossible to see anything outside. Unless they reached the mine within the next thirty seconds, Jarmuk and Maisie were both goners. Zocrone was known for its wild storms that came out of nowhere, and Maisie had seen quite a few of them in the few weeks she’d been here. But she’d never seen anything like this. The swirling dark mass on the weather radar screen must have covered a hundred mile radius, and the worst of it—the super-tornado—was nearly on them. The rover rocked back and forth, and just about every emergency warning light possible was lit up on the console.

  Terror filled Maisie, unlike anything she’d ever felt before. She’d always managed to maintain a certain level of calm in the face of even the worst situations. But she was quickly realizing that the “worst” situations she’d been in were nothing compared to this. She was only minutes away from certain death. It didn’t matter that she had a survival suit on. Once that storm hit them in full and the rover was destroyed, Maisie would be out in the open in a swirling mass of wind and debris. She was bound to be hit hard by something, and it didn’t really matter whether that something was a piece of Zekkardite or just a normal rock. Anything blasting into her survival suit at these speeds would ruin it. Her helmet would be cracked, or her oxygen tank would split open, and that would be the end of Maisie.

  I’m going to die. I’m actually going to die out here.

  Maisie looked over at Jarmuk, hoping that he was showing at least a little fear, too. She didn’t want to be the only coward on this damn rover. But Jarmuk looked as calm as ever. His eyes were staring straight ahead, as though he could actually see something through the windshield in this mess. He kept navigating the rover as though they still had a chance of making it.

  Was he crazy, or were they really that close? Maisie felt a small twinge of hope in her chest. She forced herself to remain calm. If Jarmuk wasn’t giving up yet, then neither should she. She looked straight ahead and took deep breaths, forcing herself not to watch the radar screen.

  And then, something hit the front glass of the rover, hard. Maisie only saw it for a split second, but it had looked like a giant rock. Whatever it was, it caused a large crack in the windshield. And that crack grew larger with alarming speed, until the glass was so weak that the entire front windshield was ripped away. The air pressure in the rover instantly dropped, and Maisie felt herself being pulled out. The safety straps on her harness held her back, but it was all she could do to keep her neck straight. Debris started flying in through the open windshield, and she shut her eyes to keep from seeing it. This was it. She was moments away from something hitting her survival suit, and she didn’t particularly want to see what it was that caused her death.

  Okay, moment of not panicking is officially over. Maisie screamed, long and loud. Jarmuk wouldn’t be able to hear her over the sound of the rushing wind, so she wasn’t worried about distracting him anymore. Besides, what was there to distract him from? They’d lost their gamble. There was no way they were getting out of this now. Both of them were lost. Maisie just hoped that none of the Zekkardite on their trailer would be hurled into Zocrone’s city dome.

  Goodbye, Seven Galaxies. It’s been a fun ride while it lasted. Maisie didn’t particularly believe in any sort of afterlife, so this was it. She kept her eyes closed and waited for the true blackness to take over her.

  A few moments later, the roar of the wind abruptly stopped, and Maisie figured she must have died. Except…she could still hear the beeping sounds of the rover’s console, and the safety harness was still digging into her shoulders. Shouldn’t all of those sensations be gone too?

  Maisie opened her eyes, surprised to find that she was still in the rover. Its emergency lights still flashed—particularly helpful was the one to alert the driver that an abrupt pressure change had been detected. Maisie almost had to laugh. As if that hadn’t been obvious. She looked over at Jarmuk in confusion. He was attempting to do something on one of the console’s screens, but the screen he needed to work with was cracked, making his task, whatever it was, quite difficult. She had never seen anyone looks so focused. All around them, everything was black. The only light was the blue glow from the console screens. The weather radar screen, which was ironically one of the few screens that was still completely intact, showed that the super-tornado was now directly over them. But they weren’t being tossed around anymore.

  Maisie’s brain felt like jelly. She couldn’t understand anything that was going on. She couldn’t understand how she wasn’t dead. Was she dead? Was there actually an afterworld, and had it somehow swallowed her, Jarmuk, and the rover down whole? The thought was so absurd that it made her giggle.

  And then Jarmuk let out a triumphant whoop and slammed his fist on the console victoriously.

  “I did it!” he yelled, his voice somewhat muffled by his helmet.

  “Did what?” Maisie asked. But Jarmuk didn’t seem to hear her. He was unbuckling himself from his safety harness and standing up, his long tail swishing happily behind him. In the dim light of the console, Maisie could see his tail spikes shimmering. Zocronians all had spikes on the ends of their tails, and on the ends of their fingernails, but those spikes were usually kept retracted, unless the owner of those spikes felt threatened. Maisie couldn’t imagine a more threatening situation than the one they had just been in—not that spikes would have been any defense against a super-tornado.

  Now, Jarmuk’s tail spikes slowly retreated back into his body. As he stood there, looking down at the screen and pushing a few more buttons on it, Maisie found herself unable to look away from that body. His snug fitting survival suit left little to the imagination, putting his thick muscles, broad chest, and large dick on full display. Maisie had never noticed just how perfect his body was before, and she blushed, embarrassed that she was noticing it now. Didn’t she have more important things to think about? Like how the heck they had gotten away from the storm?

  A small beep sounded in her ear, and a cheery, computerized voice from her survival suit’s computer spoke to her in crisp Universal. “Outside air pressure and temperature are within survivable range. Outside air contains minimum required amount of oxygen.

  Maisie frowned and slid her helmet’s visor up. She looked up at Jarmuk, whose blue face looked quite strange in the already blue light of the console. “What the hell happened?” she asked as she started unbuckling her safety harness. Whatever immediate danger they had been under seemed to have passed, and if Jarmuk thought it was safe to unbuckle, then she figured it was safe to follow his lead.

  Jarmuk slid his helmet’s visor up as well and grinned at her. “We made it. Welcome to the Zekkardite mines.”

  Maisie blinked a few times as her brain tried to process everything. Then all the pieces fell into place. Of course. They were inside the mine. The wind had abruptly stopped because they’d made it into the mine’s airlock. Jarmuk’s frantic fumbling at the console had been his attempt to seal the airlock.

  Maisie started laughing. It was just a chuckle at first, but it quickly became full-blown, hysterical laughter. She laughed so hard that she had to wipe tears from her eyes.

  “Um…are you okay?” Jarmuk asked.

  Maisie looked up at him and shrugged. “I’m great. I just feel like such an idiot. I was so convinced that I wasn’t going to make it that I thought the wind stopping meant I had died. But I was confused as to why you and the rover were also here, if I was dead.”

  Jarmuk stared at her for a moment, looking shocked. Then he broke out laughing as well. “Oh my god. You’re such a dork.”

  Maisie shrugged. “I guess so. My brain turned into total mush and I couldn’t think straight at all. That usually doesn’t happen to me, but in all my life, I don’t think I’ve ever been so sure I was going to die. And, trust me: I’ve had some close calls. Working on a smuggling ship for years was not without its dangers.”

  Jarmuk smiled. “Well, looks like you survived your closest call yet.”

  “Yeah, thanks to you. Your brain clearly did not turn to mush. I can’t believe you got us in here.”

  “For a minute there I wasn’t so sure myself that we were going to make it. But I figured as long as the rover was still driving, I couldn’t give up hope. And here we are. We’re alive! Maisie, we’re actually alive!”

  Jarmuk suddenly jumped over and pulled Maisie up off her chair, then pulled her into his arms. Maisie felt herself blushing, but thankfully Jarmuk couldn’t see her face. His arms around her felt so perfect and strong, and she could feel his dick through the fabric of his survival suit. He wasn’t even hard, and she could feel how big he was! She wondered what that thing would look like when he was fully erect. This thought, of course, made the heat in her cheeks deepen. Her face must have been bright red, because when Jarmuk pulled back from her to look at her face, he looked suddenly alarmed.

  “Are you okay? The color of your face, it’s…”

  “Red?” Maisie asked.

  Jarmuk nodded.

  “That’s normal. I’m, uh, just a little overheated. But I’m fine.”

  Jarmuk shook his head. “Ok. I was worried for a moment. I still don’t understand you humans and your strange reactions sometimes.”

  Maisie snorted, then coughed to try to cover up the snort. The combination of noises must have made her sound a bit like a dying horse, because Jarmuk looked at her with a growing expression of concern.

  “Are you sure you’re alright?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.” I don’t understand my own reactions half the time. So good luck with that.

  He merely nodded, and then took a step back from her. Maisie wanted to beg him not to move. His arms around her felt so good. But of course, that would have been a ridiculous request. He hadn’t meant anything by the hug, other than a simple celebration. She was the one suddenly reading too much into things and thinking things that were totally inappropriate.

  “So, what do we do now?” she asked, working hard to make her tone of voice sound normal.

  “For a few moments, I just want to relax and breathe,” Jarmuk answered. “That last little bit of our journey was tense.”

  Maisie laughed. “The whole thing was tense, if you ask me.”

  “Fair enough. But anyway, once we catch our breath, we can see if there’s anything we can do to fix up the rover, which, as you can see, is quite damaged. It’ll probably have to be towed back to Zocrone for more extensive repairs, but we should clean it up as best we can.”

  “And the trailer of Zekkardite? Did it all make it inside?”

  Jarmuk smiled broadly. “Yup. It’s all in. The weight sensor reading is still visible on the console and it hasn’t changed. That means we didn’t lose any of our load, which means none of it is going to be hurled into the city dome and cause damage.”

  Maisie sank down into her seat. “What a relief.”

  “Indeed. And it’s all thanks to you.”

  “Me? You’re the one who got us here in one piece. Well, mostly one piece. We did lose the windshield.”

  Jarmuk laughed. “Yeah, but the rover would not have been moving at all if you hadn’t fixed the regenerator matrix or whatever the sludge that thing was called. Seriously, Maisie. You’re a hero. You insisted on staying out there and fixing that engine even though you knew there was a good chance it would cost you your life.”

  “Well, you’re a hero too. You stayed with me even though you didn’t have to. You could have easily gotten on one of those rescue rovers and left me alone to figure out for myself what to do. If you had done that I’d be dead right now. There’s no way I would have made it back to these mines on my own.”

  “I guess we make a pretty good team, huh?”

  Maisie smiled up at Jarmuk. “I guess we do.”

  The smile Jarmuk returned was full of heat, and Maisie felt herself starting to blush again. Was she imagining things, or was this big blue alien feeling the same sudden chemistry that she herself was feeling?

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that question, so she turned her attention to the broken console. “Let’s see if we can make good use of our time here, then.”

  “Yes,” Jarmuk said, his voice deepening as he sat down beside her. “Let’s.”

  Something told Maisie that being stranded in the mines for a few hours was going to be anything but boring.

  Chapter Four

  “Well, that about does it, I think,” Jarmuk said as he flipped the switch for the engine’s safety cover back to the “on” position. “Not much else we can do from here to fix up the rover, but at least we made a dent in the repairs that need to be done.”

  “Mmmhmm.” Maisie was leaning over the console now, staring at the weather screen. The storm had slowed a bit as it passed over the mines, so even though it had been several hours, the last of it was only now clearing away. Jarmuk had tried contacting Zocrone several times, but there had been no response. He tried not to read too much into that. A storm of this size was bound to have caused some communication outages, so he shouldn’t have been surprised. Still, he would feel better once he was able to contact Zocrone once again and verify that the city dome was still intact.

  If he did have to be stuck out in the mines, however, he couldn’t have picked a better person to be stranded with than Maisie. She had turned out to be a lot more fun than he’d thought. He’d always thought of her as a little bit unapproachable and aloof. She always acted kindly, but she kept her distance. He’d figured he couldn’t blame her, since she was so much smarter than anyone else. If he was as much of a genius as her, he wouldn’t have wanted to hang out with a bunch of “normal” people either.

  But being with her for a few hours in the mines had made him realize that he’d pegged her all wrong. Oh, yes. She was definitely one of the smartest people he’d ever met. But she wasn’t unapproachable or cold. In fact, she almost seemed overly nervous that she was going to do something wrong and make a fool of herself in front of him. She’d apologized about a thousand times for taking so long to do the engine repairs she was doing, as though he could have somehow done them faster. Jarmuk tried to tell her that he would have taken at least three times as long to do the simple repairs, but she didn’t seem to hear him. She was distracted, although he wasn’t sure by what. The fact that she’d almost died, perhaps? That could be quite a disquieting feeling, realizing that you’d been only a few seconds away from the end.

 

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