“Get out.” Reynard lowers Leahla down the hatch. He nods at JC, who follows.
“We don’t have much air left.” Amye waves the rest of the crew to their only means of escape.
Hauser and Mark drop through.
Electrical smoke chokes the bridge. Without the air recycling unit constantly scrubbing the confined atmosphere, the level of toxins multiplies exponentially. Reynard tastes the pollutants in his mouth filter.
Reynard lowers Doug through the hatch, leaving only himself and Amye on the dark bridge.
Frantic, Amye searches every corner.
“I’m not a fan of ‘the captain goes down with his ship’ philosophy. We need to go,” he coughs.
“I’m not leaving without Kymberlynn,” Amye protests.
“How hard did you hit your head?”
“I spoke to her before the crash. Find her!” Amye kicks over some of the couch cushions. “She didn’t slip out with Scott. Those two were always together on Tartarus.”
Limited to what miniscule explanations a high school psychology teacher gave him his senior year, Reynard has enough to cope with having woken a stranger in a strange land. His own fantasies of the glamorous gun fight were destroyed during the casino shootout. He only survived because of the woman he must help. He doesn’t remember the label given to her delusion. Does he play along to get her out of the oxygen-deprived bridge, or does he shatter her by revealing cold facts?
“Amye, she’s not on the bridge.” Getting her to clean breathable air seems the best course of action.
“She was sitting next to me before the impact. She should’ve been at the helm,” Amye mutters. “She should’ve been piloting. She’s such a great pilot. If she’d been flying, we wouldn’t have crashed!”
“I won’t argue.” Nothing in his limited training allowed him to prevent the crash. “But, Amye, I’ve never seen your sister pilot a craft.”
“Sure you have. Why else was she assigned to your crew? You wanted an ace pilot, and you allowed her worthless sister to tag along.”
“The sister is far from worthless. She’s saved my butt more than once. I wouldn’t be standing here if not for you, Amye.”
“Don’t placate me. I know you only brought me along so you could have your perfect pilot.”
“I wanted you in my crew. Current job be damned, you’re a genius. I wanted the best in my crew. So what if one question, on one test, didn’t allow you to advance in rank? You’re a part of my crew because you’re expertly qualified.”
“So’s Kymberlynn. She has the highest pilot rating.”
“She had the highest.”
Amye pauses at the tense shift Reynard made. “Had. Had? HAD! She’s not dead.”
“Amye, I’ve never met your sister.”
“I was there when you invited her to join your crew. She was there when I sniped those Mokarran. She was there when…”
“She died on a shuttlecraft accident before we ever met, Amye.”
“No. Impossible! She’s…she’s.” Amye reaches into her jacket pocket, producing the ticket stubs from the Dracon Arena. Only one has been torn. The second remains unspent. Amye collapses under the pressure of reality as her air-deprived brain craves more oxygen.
Reynard scoops his arms under her pits and drags her to her feet. As he moves her toward the floor hatch, she asks, “She’s dead? Then who’ve I been talking to for months?”
“You figured out this hatch was in the floor. You saved us again from dying a horrible asphyxiation death.”
“I need a drink.” Amye staggers to the bridge doors. “You’re just saying she’s been dead to get me off the bridge.”
“Would such a lie work? You need off this bridge and to clear your thoughts. Kymberlynn died on Tartarus in a shuttle accident.”
Amye pounds on the first sealed bulkhead in the main corridor. “Smerth’n hell.”
“Is a drink more important than breathable air?”
“Why won’t you tell me where’s she at?”
“She’s already outside the Dragon.”
Amye flies at her captain, tackling Reynard. They spill over a control panel in a mass of flailing limbs. Reynard shields his face while Amye pounds on his forearms. He works his foot under the console for leverage, flipping her mass off of him. They both draw into Calthos defensive katas.
“Amye.” He flings the broken air breather from his mouth. “I only have a minute to breath.”
“You just want me to step off the bridge and accept she’s dead?”
Reynard coughs. “Yes.”
Kymberlynn materializes from the smoky haze blanking the bridge. “Amye. Remember…” She disappears.
Rarely did she make the trek to the surface of Tartarus, but Kymberlynn earned her first command. As the hyperspace transport shuttle lifted off the landing pad, it exploded. “By the gods.” She collapses into Reynard’s arms. “She’s really dead.”
“Sometimes we want the people we care about to be there so bad, they just are when we need them.” Reynard coughs.
Amye draws away from him, plopping down in order to swing her feet over the open hatch. “Your explanation’s crazier than apparently I am,” she says as she drops through the hole.
Reynard pops up from the bottom of the makeshift slide of hull skin. “How’s Australia?”
“JC’s convinced she’s got internal injuries, but without a scanner she has no way of knowing for sure.” Scott asks, “What took you two so long getting out of there?”
“I think Amye hit her head in the crash,” Reynard lies. He realizes Amye’s delusion was ongoing for much longer. “She wanted to search for her sister.”
Scott lowers his voice. “She died before you ever came to retrieve me on Tartarus.”
“We need JC to check her for bumps on the head.” Reynard also doesn’t need Scott questioning Amye’s abilities. It will take Scott, Doug, and Amye to get the Dragon to a semblance of flight status.
“What about you? The seatbelt had to dig into your new kidney.”
“It healed fine.”
JC uses several emergency insulation blankets to make Australia as comfortable as possible before joining her captain.
Joe arranges thin twigs in a pyramid formation on a base of dried leaves and grass. Maintaining his skill at
