Echo and the Lone Drifter

Hey, Lit readers—

This novella is complete. It is about a lone drifter who gets lucky. The tale is a little different, a flight of fancy. It has a slow build, but sometimes you have to go a long way to find love in the deep-dark.

There are definitely elements of NonCon to this, and that is where I have tended to land. The spirit is unwilling, as it were. But I was worried it was not a complete fit. I suppose it also could have gone under BDSM or NonHuman. I chose SciFi/Fantasy because I tend to write there too.

This writing is for Rumpole, who feared that after publishing in erotica I would turn my back on the site. This is me being a duck's ass, letting things roll off and attempting to fulfill my promise to him because he reminded me to be fucking grateful. I am, deeply so, to readers and to those people who encourage emerging writers.—H.

To my forever erotica muse, Bellie444. Surprise! You always inspire me -Uncle.

To Aly, my ideal reader and window friend from this site who taps gently on my glass when I am writing and forgives me my distractions, and who makes beautiful art that all the world should see.

I do hope you enjoy it. Crossing my fingers you do. Peace out.

-Semiosis50

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ECHO AND THE LONE DRIFTER

by Semiosis50

#

"For echo is the soul of the voice exciting itself in hollow places." -Michael Ondaatje.

#

"Big Dog is barking, Captain."

Logan looked up. The captain of the Puck was sitting alone on the bridge. He was alone on the ship, the only crew.

"How far, Puck?" Logan said into the empty room.

"Forty-eight L2," Puck answered.

"Long-ways dark. Sounds like the array pinged an asteroid."

"Unknown."

Logan sat back in his chair at the table on the bridge. There was another chair across from him, tucked away. But that was only because the Puck could take two passengers, was equipped to do so. And when he docked on Dufur, Logan sometimes had guests, port authorities or people interested in the AI ship he was developing. His ship, the Puck, was the prototype.

Forty-eight days. That was a long time for the Puck to streak into the belly of the deep-dark. Big Dog, designed to sense anything anomalous in the vectors Logan had designated, could be wrong. At that distance, things got messy for the Puck's sensors. If it turned out to be an echo, Logan would be out the time and fuel it would take to crawl back out of the deep.

But he thought Puck was ready.

"Let's go and see," Logan said, raising his hand, the panel appearing in front of his fingers. "Plot our course. Cycle low until approach. Ready the stasis chamber."

"Aye."

Logan put in the codes that would allow Puck to navigate while he was out. When he dropped his hand, the virtual console disappeared. Logan got up, walking into the stasis chamber off the bridge and sitting in the seat there.

Puck readied the cycle as Logan attached the leads and hooked the hypodermic to a long term port in his hand. He arranged his limbs. Puck would dump the chemicals into his system that would put him to sleep and, deeper into the cycle, depress all his bodily functions. Logan felt himself getting drowsy. His eyes closed.

#

"Alert. Level I, Captain."

Logan opened his eyes, hearing the steady pocks and the hushed hiss of the stasis chamber adjusting to the change, lights coming up. He felt wrong. He realized Puck had given him stimulants, waking him. The chemicals were warring in his system, making him sluggish. He brought his hands up, the leads trailing, rubbing his face.

"What's going on, Puck?"

"We're being scanned."

Logan made an incredulous sound, dropping his hands.

"What does Big Dog say?"

"The sensors report we are alone with our target."

"Send out a hail, standard Concord language. Put me back to sleep."

"Aye."

It was a sensor glitch. They happened all the time. It was just disconcerting when they happened while Logan was in stasis sleep, but he was the one who had set the protocol for Puck to wake him.

"Let know if you get a reply, Puck," Logan said, a little slurred as the drugs hit, humor in his voice, closing his eyes again.

"Aye," Puck said, having no sense of humor.

Terrans had never found evidence of other sentient life. One-celled organisms. Algae. Spores. A very simple plant discovered about four years ago that lived in argon gas and that had the Concord Science Department practically pissing themselves with excitement. They assumed other life forms like themselves were out there somewhere, but space was vast.

While Logan slept, the ship would take a little time to go a very long way with the drive. When he arrived, the ship would take a long time to go a very little way with standard engines. Logan would sleep in stasis for thirty-eight 24-hour cycles, the measurement Puck used because of its Terran occupant's circadian rhythms. Logan would come out of stasis for the ten days it would take to approach the target.

#

In the deep-dark, distance wasn't really relative. It was more like an absolute. You could travel at a speed so fast you outraced light, travel for your whole life and you would still only be on the edge of it.

Intruding into one tiny corner of all that nothing, a speck of something appeared, hardly moving. Much closer, the speck became a ship shooting forward at awesome velocities. Closer still, inside the ship was a chamber. Inside the chamber was a Terran man, asleep.

In his dream, Logan was sitting at the table on the bridge of the Puck. He was looking out the window at the meadows of the Azen Plains on Dufur, his home planet.

In the window's view, Scry floated and bobbed across the meadows. The scry were a native species of plant life on Dufur, nocturnal and luminescent, shaped like a glowing white orb about the size of a person's head. They floated everywhere, harmless.

Logan watched two Scry gently meet one another. They bumped softly and returned, their tendrils lazily reaching for the other, passing along genetic information for recombination—mating, essentially, as the plants did, constantly—and separating, each floating on to the next encounter.

Logan frowned lightly. Even if the ship could have a window to the outside, which it couldn't, this wasn't an external bulkhead. Logan realized he was dreaming, lucid. He often did this in stasis. It made for interesting intervals. He looked around. The bridge was dark except for minimal floor lighting.

Movement caught his eye. He looked. There was a figure in the doorway leading to the stasis chamber directly across from where he was sitting.

The Puck was small. In addition to the bridge and stasis chamber, the ship had a bedroom, a combination shower and medical facility, a head, and a rec room that contained weight machines as well as a library of movies and books. Behind the bridge were the hold and the airlock leading to the hatch.

The figure stayed in the shadows of the arch of the open door, a silhouette, slight. Logan could call up the lights with a word. He didn't. He waited.

—Hello—

It was an idea, no sound, coming into his head. Logan had been a lone drifter for the last ten years. He spent a great deal of time out here on his own and a significant portion of that time asleep. He wasn't worried or anxious to learn his mind had produced an echo, had summoned a visitor from his imagination. Logan went with it, curious.

"Hello," he answered. "Who are you?"

There was a pause.

—Echo—

Logan's mouth crooked. He wasn't usually so literal.

"Echo is your name?" he asked, playing along.

—Yes—

"I'm Logan. Why don't you come out?" he said.

The figure was female, he suddenly knew, in the way of dreams. She was afraid.

"Don't be scared," he said, although it was a dream. His dream. "I won't hurt you."

—Even if I'm wrong?—

The ideas almost had a flavor. Somehow he knew she didn't mean incorrect or morally wrong. She meant objectionable, disgusting. Monstrous and ugly.

"You're not wrong," he assured his dream.

—Hurry. It's coming—

Logan woke with a start.

He was in the stasis chamber, not fully cycled down yet. It was nothing, a dream. Usually only Puck could rouse him from stasis, but in the initial phase he sometimes woke briefly. Closing his eyes, Logan went down again.

#

In his dream, Logan was looking out the window of the Puck and into the huge arboretum in the capital city Sparten on Dufur, trees all around, their dark purple foliage. It was night. The Scry were floating and bumping against one another, their floating tendrils, each with a small lit tip, joining and then parting again, the movements caressing, languid, always somehow sensual.

There was no window here. There were no windows on the Puck. He realized he was dreaming.

—Hello—

Logan turned his head. She was in the same place. He remembered her.

"Echo?"

—Yes—

"Come out where I can see you."

He felt her reluctance.

"Are you so strange?" he said, very curious now to be dreaming of her twice.

Silence. The flavors of her thoughts were complex. Fear. A sense of despair.

—It's coming. Where it passes there isn't anything left—

"What's coming?"

—Please hurry—

"Let me see you."

He felt her reluctance.

"Echo," he said.

Logan woke, his chest expanding, inhaling. He was barely aware of it, although Puck registered the change in Logan's brain chemistry and made a note in the log, flagging it for Logan's review when he woke.

#

Logan was dreaming. He was sitting at the table on the bridge of the Puck and looking out the window to the sea, the cliffs of Manen not far, a straight and sheer wall that loomed.

He watched as Scry floated across the surface of the shallow waves between the deep sea and the cliffs, having floated down and now trapped there, not venturing too far out, trying to escape. But sometimes the wind would pick up and sweep a few of them out to deeper water and it would be enough.

A great tumult of water parted below one of the Scry and a form erupted, massive toothless jaws opening, engulfing the glowing orb, a brief moment where Logan could see the complete bone structure of the animal's head past the thin cartilage, its eyes darkened. Then the orb's light went out, the predator submerging, its crest knobby.

There wasn't a window here. He recognized the dream.

"Echo?" he said, turning his head.

—Hello—

"Are you going to come out this time?"

—Yes—

Logan turned his chair and waited, thinking what a strange dream this was, the texture of it immediate and real. Thinking how strange it was that he'd have the same dream repeatedly, or that he'd even remember that he'd dreamt it before.

Things could go sideways for a Terran psyche in the deep-dark, in isolation. He wondered what his mind was both so persistently interesting in showing him and also so reluctant to reveal. He could see where she was, a dark form.

The form slowly came closer, walking, resolving to a more coherent shape. Definitely female, her silhouette curvy. It stopped, hesitating.

Logan saw something in his mind. It just appeared. It was a creature. He couldn't make sense of it at first. Those were...wings? A white form, a prehensile tail, big, about the size of a lander.

Feathers, he realized. It was covered in white feathers like a bird, but it didn't look like a bird, a strong thick and long neck, delicate veined nostrils that flared. It leaned forward and spread its wings, a powerful movement. Iridescent color, an indigo blue, flashed across the surface of the feathers, rippling light.

Mecca.

Logan didn't know where that idea came from, but that's what the creature was. He studied the being. Beautiful. The image disappeared.

—You're not afraid?—

"Is that what you are?" Logan replied. "You don't look big enough. Lights, Puck."

The command would work because his mind expected it to and this was his dream and he was lucid. The lights in the cabin came up. Logan watched the figure step back sharply, fading behind the bulkhead.

"You said you'd come out," Logan said, determined to show himself whatever he wanted to see so badly, since he continued to dream about her. "You said I could see you."

She moved away from the doorway and stopped, seeming resigned, going still, waiting as he looked at her. He felt tension in his belly, a wave. She was naked and wasn't that nice, the light dimmer between rooms, his eyes traveling over her.

He didn't know why his mind would make it all so mysterious—it wasn't like conjuring her had some veiled significance to him—but Logan wasn't complaining. One of those dreams. He never turned those dreams down. Jerking off got monotonous. He stood up, unsurprised to find he was also naked.

Wasn't that the way with dreams?

He walked, approaching her, watching as luminescence suddenly appeared in an area under the skin of her chest, between her very pretty breasts. The light had a warm cast, almost an amber, dark red honey. The warm light separated, traveling quickly to her shoulders and down her arms to her hands, disappearing, his eyes tracking it.

It happened again as he got to her, more light that traveled under her skin, following the same path, throbbing once in her hands before it disappeared. Her hair was white, falling all the way to her butt, slightly wavy, her skin a dark tan. Her body. He had dreamed up one genuinely sexy whatever-she-was.

Logan woke. He shouldn't have woken. He grimaced. Too bad. Maybe he'd dream about her again.

"Puck, run a diagnostic on the stasis chamber and then put me back to sleep."

Maybe if he went right back down he'd catch her again. His mouth quirked.

"System check complete. No malfunction. Aye."

It was him then. He wondered if anyone had ever developed a tolerance to the stasis drug. Drowsiness came. Logan closed his eyes.

#

Logan dreamed he was sitting at his table on the bridge of the Puck, looking out the window at the lake on his estate on Dufur, the water a deep greenish-blue with whitecaps. A skiff stuttered across the surface, its bow dipping and rising, its docking rope broken. There were no windows on the Puck.

He realized he was dreaming. Logan looked out the window at the boat, the rope trailing from the skiff. A dream analogy from his psyche meant to symbolize his anxiety going so far into the deep-dark. A part of him wondered why he didn't dream of somewhere else, considering how much time he spent here. He had the muddy dream-thought that maybe the distance was too vast even for his imagination to travel.

He decided he didn't care when he saw her shadowy form. He turned his head, pleased.

"Lights, Puck," Logan said.

The lights came up. She was there. His eyes traveled over her. She was exactly as she'd been before. He stood, naked again, walking toward her.

He felt both desire and also amusement. In reality, such a figure was unlikely, very definitely a fantasy his mind had created. There might be some overlaps, given that planets tended to have things in common—gravity, for example, that limited biologic structures—but most likely an alien species would simply be too different.

But evidently his dream mind hadn't cared. He'd made her up anyway. Logan wasn't unhappy. She was odd, yes, but about as sexy as he could imagine a woman being. He approached her, putting out his hand. She hesitated, that amber color running under her skin again. Then she put hers into it, her skin warm.

He walked her back toward the center of the bridge, watching her body. Bipedal, definitely, she did that very well, his eyes on her hips. She could bipedal all she wanted as far as he was concerned and he could watch.

His eyes traveled up to her tits as they got to better light, then down to her belly and lower. He blinked and then he grinned. She had feathers between her legs, covering her sex. Soft white feathers about half the length of his finger overlapped her genital area. Her face was as beautiful as her body. Her features were delicate, full lips, high flat cheeks. She was different, definitely. He never would have thought his imagination would be so creative. He'd been inspired.

A slightly larger portion of her eye area was filled with pupil, he noticed, a shining color, a deep sea-green seeming even deeper because the iris had little pattern, the color with almost no variation. The black pupil in the center of her eye was more like a tall oval than a circle. She had heavy dark lashes tipped with white, sweeping white brows becoming the smallest downy white feathers, just a few overlapping each other before sweeping up and blending into her hairline, a small ridge above it.

He reached. She flinched, surprising him. He slowed his hand and lifted her hair, silky, looking at her ear. It was swept back, not sticking out like a Terran's but curling around her skull a little, a slight graduated ridge you almost didn't notice, the same shape as his.

He looked down and took her hand, lifting it, fascinated. Her hands looked Terran, but the nails weren't flat arcs. They were thicker, raised and dark and rounded slightly at the tops, a little pointy. Along the bottom of her hand, from the base of her pinky, ran another ridge, up her arm.

His dream was so real that he could feel the texture of the ridge, strangely raised as he followed it. He lifted her arm gently, wondering what it was, following the thickening of the ridge along the underside of her forearm to her upper arm with a light touch and then to under her shoulder and down her ribs, her skin warm and silky.

When he reached her waist, she shivered. When she shivered, there was a rustling sound and feathers suddenly appeared in a line and stiffened all along the same ridge.

Logan gave a small laugh, delighted. A whole demi-wing shaped itself and puffed up, rising to fan outward, rows of overlapping white feathers, long and short. They were not for independent flight, obviously, they weren't large enough. She could probably glide from a height, he imagined.

He stood in front of her and extended her arm fully, running his hand gently along the underside of the feathers, touching the tips, soft, making that same dry rustling sound. When he did that, her breath caught and her nipples hardened, his eyes going there.

Logan felt a surge. He dropped her hand, meeting her eyes. The thing about dreams, you know, was that everything happened in your mind.

She retreated as he stepped forward, her arm falling, the feathers folding inward and disappearing into the ridge. The amber light flowed under her skin again as he put his hand behind her back. He spanned his hand across the area between her delicate shoulder blades, stopping her, holding her there. He stepped even closer to her, his lower body coming up against hers. His other hand moved to cup her breast.

He looked down at the high swell in his hand, her pink nipple jutting, framed between his thumb and pointer finger. It was a perfect roundness, firm weight, the warmth of her flesh fitting into his palm, the warmth of her belly pressed to him, her other nipple just touching his chest.

When his thumb moved and touched her nipple, a ripple of color, not amber now but gold, intense, flashed across her skin from the aureole, a luminescence, iridescent, and her breath caught again. Logan was aroused, his cock heavy and thick against her belly.

"You seem so real," he told his dream, his eyes still on her breast.

He looked at her face. She frowned lightly.

"I am real," she said, the first words she'd spoken aloud.

For no reason, she startled and looked to the side, back into the stasis chamber, unfocusing like she was listening. Logan dropped his hand and stepped away, looking where she did. There was nothing there that wasn't usually there. He didn't hear anything. He watched as her eyes widened.