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“Maxwell.” Garrett caught Maxwell’s arm as he passed him, still recovering from the emotional whiplash of the conversation. None of this was like Maxwell, but Garrett was starting to realize that he really had no idea what Maxwell was “like” beneath the surface. He swallowed and lowered his voice. “What’s happening?”
Maxwell looked at Garrett’s hand on his arm instead of up into Garrett’s face. Then he pulled himself free. “We should get going.”
Garrett’s chest clenched, and he stared after him as Maxwell climbed onto the armrests of a chair under the exit hatch Garrett had left open. He opened his mouth but realized he didn’t have anything to say. And Maxwell was right. They had to get going. Rhast’s family waited for them down on the planet’s surface. “I’ll start up the ship.”
“Garrett?” Maxwell called just as Garrett stepped into the cockpit.
With an embarrassing amount of speed, Garrett spun back to him. “Yeah?”
Maxwell still had his hands on the crank to close the hatch, but he glanced briefly at Garrett and bit his bottom lip. “We can talk later, alright?”
Garrett’s chest loosened, and he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Yeah. Alright.”
Feeling less off-balance, Garrett plopped into the pilot’s seat and started flipping switches and hitting buttons to fire up the old junker.
As soon as Garrett flipped on communications, the radio crackled, and a voice Garrett recognized as an old-hat Resistance flight coordinator came through. “Everything ready for takeoff, Twal?”
“Looks like it,” Garrett responded. “The Klah’Eel ready to go?”
“They’ve been ready.” Even through the static of the old panel, Garrett could make out the wariness in his words.
“How’s the weather down on Tava?” Garrett glanced at Maxwell as he came into the cockpit, and Maxwell flashed him the thumbs-up—all the hatches were battened down, and the ship was ready to go—then buckled himself into the copilot’s seat.
“No idea.” The coordinator sighed hard enough for Garrett to wince at the static. “Joan can’t make heads or tails of the new weather patterns.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see when we get there.” Garrett taxied the ship over to the runway and spun up the engines. “Cleared for takeoff?”
“Clear. Good luck down there, Twal.”
“Thanks.” Garrett rolled his shoulders back, glanced over to make sure Maxwell was ready, and then gunned the engine.
He’d seen the way Sebastian took off—maniac flyer that he was—and Garrett hated to be like him, but even he couldn’t resist hitting the throttle harder than he needed and hurling himself into the air with an exhilarating sense of abandon.
The old ship shot down the runaway and leaped into the sky with more dexterity than Garrett would have credited her with, and he gave a delighted bark of achievement as they banked hard and lifted into Carta’s thick atmosphere.
Maxwell chuckled from his spot on the copilot’s seat and shook his head. “You and Sebastian.”
“Are nothing alike.” Garrett pointed at him sternly.
Maxwell rolled his eyes. “Sure.”
Maxwell pulled out his data tablet and settled in, and Garrett smiled to see him relaxed and acting, at least for a time, like the Maxwell he knew. He checked his sensors to see the Klah’Eel ships swarming around him just like he’d expected, swallowed down the instinctual anxiety that gave him, and leaned back in his chair to pilot them to their abandoned home planet.
This ship couldn’t achieve the speeds of his recon fighter, meaning the trip would take double the time, but at least no one had to be chemically put to sleep, and the g’s were only uncomfortable instead of excruciating.
Despite the discomfort, Garrett found himself nodding off. If this were a newer ship with a solid autopilot, he’d actually be able to fall asleep, maybe even get a full night’s rest or, at the very least, a few more hours than he currently had. He considered asking Maxwell to man the ship for at least some of the empty space between Carta and Tava, but when he looked over, he saw Maxwell’s head nestled between his shoulder and his headrest, already fast asleep himself, and immediately discarded the idea. The man probably needed the rest more than he did.
So he cruised effortlessly through the empty space and the debris field without even a hint of pirate activity. Considering the phalanx of Klah’Eel that accompanied him, though, that wasn’t all that surprising.
He rubbed his eyes for the thousandth time as he cleared the debris field and descended into Tava’s atmosphere. According to his coordinates, they should already be closing in on the apartment block they needed to evacuate. Maybe this would be a quick in and out.
But as he swooped down over some abandoned fields, his communications panel crackled to life, and Joan’s voice screamed out of it.
“Land! Now!”
Maxwell shot up, and Garrett’s heart seized in his chest before he managed to scramble and hit the reply button. “Joan? What the hell?”
“Land your goddamn ship right now, Garrett Twal!”
