Navigator's Log

Chapter 3-1

Navigator’s Log

By J.M. Snyder

Log Entry 04.25.3021, 14:07

hours

There are five of us on this mission

and we’re all nervous as hell.

Fifty colonists dead, two hundred more

dying—how can you not be nervous? The Center’s got the World Health

Organization out here already, and the area’s been quarantined

since last week. So far there haven’t been any new cases, and a few

of the infected even show signs of recovery, but we’re still on

edge because we’re the ones out past the no-fly zone.

We’re the ones looking for the

origin of the virus.

The mission captain is smart, quick on

his feet, and always good for a laugh. He’s a stocky man, a fact

enhanced by his short stature, and he has a scar running down one

cheek from eye to chin. Every time he laughs, his face reddens and

that scar stands out, livid and white, like neon. His name’s Paol

Frisco and I’ve heard talk about him from other guys at the Center.

They say he’s fun to pal around with, and so far he’s been pretty

cool. He definitely knows what he’s doing, knows this planet like

the back of his hand. When I asked how many times he’s been to

Terra he told me only once, but he says he was born here. I guess

that makes him our resident expert, no?

Then there’s Ansel Eris. He’s the

pathologist, specializing in botanical contagions. I’ve known him

for a while now, and he’s good at what he does when he’s not being

a d**k. He’s so damn serious all the time, barely even cracks a

smile and heaven forbid he ever actually laugh. He’s tall

and skinny, lanky in a way that makes you think he hasn’t broken a

sweat in years, and despite the military-style buzz cut he favors,

he still looks like a geek. Add in those safety glasses he always

has on, and you almost expect to see a “Kick Me” sign pinned to the

back of his flight suit whenever he walks by.

Ansel is wicked smart, though, a fact

he won’t let anyone forget. After all, he was the one who isolated

the gene for this disease after the first outbreak five years

ago.

It’s a filovirus like Marburg or

Ebola, but for some reason it doesn’t respond to the typical

hemoflush treatments. On the flight over I read up on the bug, but

there’s not much data on the thing—no one knows the host plant; no

one knows the cure. This go-‘round, it surfaced first in a little

girl, eight years old, playing out in the wastelands with her older

brother. When she got sick, her brother was too scared to remember

where they had been. That’s when we came in.

I said five of us, right? There’s me,

Tylar Daire, navigator. I don’t usually sign up for research

missions, but my old pal Jareth Banagher called to tell me he’d

been stationed on this ship and they needed a star guide, was I in?

What else could I say? Of course I was in. Jareth and I go way

back—we both served the Center as soldiers for years. He

re-enlisted while I went solo, hiring myself out to whoever needed

someone to see their ship through the known planets.

Jareth’s a typical grunt and cornered

me right after we boarded to tell me, on the down-low, he wasn’t

too sure about this mission after all. He doesn’t like fighting

things he can’t see, but there’s always at least one soldier

assigned whenever the Center has a ship out in the field and

Jareth’s a good man to have around, what with his broad chest,

thick muscles, quick reflexes…and the cybernetic modifications he’s

made to his body over the years. He has infrared vision in both

eyes—zoom in the left, GPS in the right—and a couple gigabytes in

his temple for data storage. There’s a USB plug behind his right

ear, hidden beneath his bushy dark hair, but it still freaks me out

every time I see it. Once he even mentioned X-ray capability, and

ever since then, whenever he starts blinking one eye, then the

next, I can’t help but think he’s seeing everyone naked.

He’s a fine soldier, don’t get me

wrong, and one of the best friends I’ve ever had. He’s hellacious

with a gun and he’s got that “do or die” bodyguard mentality

that’ll keep Ansel alive if things get hairy. Which we don’t

expect—this seems like standard fare. Even Ansel isn’t too sure

we’ll find the host plant. He’s been looking for it for

years.

No mission’s complete without a pilot.

Enter Rion Z’ev. Or rather, as he styles himself, the “flying ace.”

This boy was born with wings, let me tell you. And I’m not just

saying that ‘cause I think he’s the sexiest thing in a flight suit

I’ve seen in a long time. On the way to Terra he got us through a

meteor shower with our rear vid screens burned out—we were blind

until we landed at the colony. When I told him he was amazing, he

winked at me. “You don’t know just how amazing I can

be.”

Damned if I didn’t flush at that. At

my age! Like I’m some schoolboy with a hard crush.

Truth of it is, I’m glad I’m the

navigator. I’m the one on the bridge with Rion all the time, mostly

alone, and he’s got a bad way of touching my hands and my back when

he passes me. Is it flirting or is he one of those people with a

smaller personal space than everyone else? I don’t know, but I like

it. This is our first day out in the field, and already I’m smiling

at everything he says. He’s got to think I’m a fool.

He asked me what I know of this virus.

I told him not much, but I wish I knew everything there was about

it just so I could talk to him and he’d listen. He listens when I

tell him the coordinates for the map, and he’s pretty good at

listening when I tell him I’ve got bogeys on my screens, but I want

to say something that’s not related to the ship and I want him to

hear me. Me.

Today we landed near what Ansel calls

the “point of contact.” On the bridge, it was just the two of us

with the others on our screens—they were outside the ship,

gathering specimens while Jareth kept watch. Rion had his feet

propped up on the console, hands folded behind his head, looking

like a kid about to doze off. With a sigh, he told me, “This is

gonna be a long mission, I just know it. I can steer through an

asteroid belt without a dent in my ship and here I am, cruising

over Terra looking for a damn plant. What a waste of

talent.”

I laughed. I had my chair turned so I

could watch him from the corner of my eye without him knowing it,

and I liked what I saw. He’s just got this raw sensuality about

him…it’s in his lithe legs, his muscled arms, the shape of his jaw.

There’s thin hair on his chin, just tiny little reddish curls like

he’s trying for a goatee and doesn’t quite make it, and I imagine

the hair at his crotch is probably just as kinked. The hair on his

nape is short and tight, with a mop of wavy fringe combed down over

his forehead. Every now and then he shakes his head to one side and

the hair tumbles over itself to move out of his eyes. When he runs

a hand through it, giving him that carefree, windblown look, my

fingers ache to delve into the same auburn thickness.

At my laughter, Rion tried to sound

indignant. “It’s true!” He glanced over at me and smiled. He’s got

a gorgeous grin. “I’m meant for so much more.”

“Aren’t we all?” I asked. I

smiled back and, for the first time since this mission started, I

swear he looked at me. At me. Not as a navigator but as a

man. His grin faltered, and he let his gaze wander from my face

down over my body. I sat with a writing stylus in hand, the tip of

it against my lower lip, and held my breath because he was finally

looking at me.

After a moment of silence, I prompted,

“Rion?”

I liked the way it made him jump, like

he was thinking things he shouldn’t be thinking. I wanted to ask

him what they were. I’m almost sure they’re the same things I’m

thinking, involving me and him in one of the sleeping bunks, the

little hole-in-the-wall beds we have that I’m thinking might (just

might) fit us both.

He started to say something when a

hollow knocking echoed through the bridge and Paol’s face filled

our screens. He looked stupid in the white biohazard suit Ansel

insists they wear and he was tapping on one of the cameras mounted

on the outside of the ship. “You guys?” he called out, then tapped

the camera lens again. “Is this thing on?”

“God,” I muttered. He’s a

dork.

Rion laughed and clicked on the

intercom. “Standing by, Captain.”

“Just checking up on you

two.” Then he winked into the lens. I could’ve sworn he was winking

at me, like he could read my thoughts and knew what was going on in

my mind right then, picking up those sordid images of Rion and me

together in a lusty embrace.

Rion laughed again and propped his

feet back up on the console. He closed his eyes, and I tried to

think of something to say to get him to talk to me again but

nothing came to mind. Just those images of the two of us in the

bunks and naked and God. I clicked off the screen in front

of me and turned back to my star charts.

* * * *

Log Entry 04.28.3021, 18:52

hours

Three days deeper into the wastelands

and nothing. There are plenty of plants, and we have enough samples

filling the ship to start our own rain forest, but there’s no sign

of the virus. Last night over dinner, I suggested maybe it wasn’t

botanical at all. s**t, you’d have thought I suggested Christ was a

woman come down to save us, from the look Ansel gave me. “This is

why I’m the scientist,” he said, in that holier than

thou voice that comes so naturally to him, “and you’re

just the navigator. Stick to your charts and let me handle

the thinking around here, okay?”

Good thing he has Jareth for

protection because otherwise? I’d deck his scrawny ass.