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Maxwell, sweet and sated after he’d let Garrett take him apart here in this very cockpit.
Maxwell, so nervous and wary, but who trusted Garrett, despite everything.
Maxwell, the man who never slept so that he could heal every hurt on anyone he ever found, who was brave and fearless and kind and patient and dead on the floor beside him.
Garrett choked down a sob as he spread the blanket out on the floor. He lifted Maxwell’s body up and placed it in the center of the blanket, but before he wrapped the blanket around him and covered him from view, Garrett couldn’t resist taking a glance at the one place he was almost too scared to look.
His heart stopped.
The side of Maxwell’s face had been nearly blown off, and Garrett’s stomach rolled at that, but after a moment, he could barely see it because all he could look at was the gash at the top of Maxwell’s spinal vertebrae. Maybe it was just a cut. Garrett brushed a finger tentatively over the wound, and when it opened wider, he yanked it back away.
He quickly threw the rest of the blanket over Maxwell, hiding him from view, and threw himself back into the pilot’s seat.
What the hell was happening?
Garrett grabbed the control stick and stared down at his own shaking hand. Then out the windshield, now dark with the storm. What was he thinking? They couldn’t take off yet. The storm would take them out.
He turned the radio back on and hailed Carta. Static. The storm was well and truly started now.
He braced his elbows on his bloodstained knees and stared at the floor between his feet. Great, now he had nothing but him and his thoughts and—
The ship suddenly rocked forward, and an alarm screeched on the control panel.
—And fucking pirates!
“Bastards!” Garrett hissed over his shoulder as though he’d be able to see them behind his ship, but of course, there was only the closed door of the cockpit.
So much for thinking the pirates had other things to worry about.
“What was that?” Kira came flying into the room just as Garrett revved up the engines and started taxying the ship around.
“They’re shooting at us.” Garrett brushed off the dusty short-range radar screen this hunk of junk still had and clicked it on. He was finally thankful they were flying such an ancient ship now that he had to take off unable to see out the window or any external cameras and with the gas interfering with any other sensors.
“Can they even see us?” Kira grabbed the headrest of the copilot’s seat and stared out the window.
“I don’t think so.” Garrett maneuvered them around to face the direction he was maybe eighty percent sure was a clear runway, at least assuming the pirates hadn’t moved into the way. If they had moved into the way, well then, their death by a fiery explosion would probably be quick. “But at this range, they don’t need to see us to shoot us. Tell everyone to hang on.”
“Fuck, we should have stayed in the mines.” Kira spun around and went back into the passenger room, and Garrett couldn’t help but agree with her. This mission had gone from bad to worse and worse and fucking worse.
Well, it was ending now.
Garrett waited until the cockpit door had slid shut, counted to five, and hoped that was enough. Then he revved the engines and hit the radio again. “Patrick, we’re taking off.”
“Y—zzz. Zzz—what?” The static rendered Patrick’s response illegible. Hopefully he’d gotten the message anyway.
Garrett opened the throttle, and they shot forward. Every radar blip in the screen Garrett glued his eyes to beeped closer and closer way faster than comfortable, but nothing reared up in front of them. The ship shook as it raced forward, the wind buffeting and rocking it, but they stayed true to their course, and as soon as they reached the minimum necessary speed, Garrett pulled back on the control stick, and they rose into the air.
Immediately a gust rolled them to the left, and screams echoed from the room behind him, but Garrett kept them going up. They were going to make it. They were fine. Garrett gritted his teeth and brought both hands to the control stick to keep it steady. The storms were low atmospheric ones, they just had to get high enough to break free, and they’d be fine.
As long as they didn’t crash into the mine’s spire.
But they didn’t, and in a few minutes that felt like hours, the thick gaseous storm clouds broke across the windshield, and they soared up into the clear sunlit stratosphere.
“We see you!” Patrick’s voice came crystal clear through the radio, and in the distance, Garrett saw sunlight glinting off the unmistakable sleek silhouette of a Klah’Eel fighter. Garrett had never thought a Klah’Eel ship looked so beautiful.
He slumped in relief and eased up off the control stick. “Good. Keep us covered.”
“Not a problem.” The ship in the distance swooped closer, and Garrett tuned the radio to Carta.
