Ryann went to move, but Angelique was already heaving herself up to her feet.
“Don’t you know anything about this damn ship?” she cursed, pulling angrily at the circuit-breaker panel. “I’m trying to keep us alive here dammit!” She punched at the panel in frustration.
“Hey, easy Angelique! I’m sorry. I’m just not so good with the nuts-and-bolts stuff — you know me, I’m much better at blowing stuff up than fixing it.”
Angelique just stared at him in fury; her eyes were wide and staring, the dried blood and grime giving her a look of madness.
“Is everything just a damn joke to you?” she hissed at last, and as she continued, her voice rose into a scream. “You don’t seem to realise — we’ve got less than two hour’s of air left, no power, and we’re four hours away from the Defiance! Even if we did manage to get the damn comms back online we still can’t put out a distress signal because a giant Luminal battleship is waiting for us out there, ready to blow us all to hell!”
“Hey, easy,” said Ryann in a soothing voice. He stepped towards her, laying his hands lightly upon her arms. “We’ll think of something — you always find us a way out of stuff like this.”
Angelique exploded in fury, lashing out at him, her arms flailing.
“I can’t do anything!” she yelled, and her voice was raw with fear. “The ship’s wrecked! Everything’s wrecked! I can’t do anything!”
Ryann struggled with her in his arms, holding her tightly to him as she sobbed, her fury burning slowly away.
“It’s like I’m trapped in that escape pod all over again,” she whispered at last, alluding to the time when Ryann had first found her, drifting amid the wreckage of her parents’ ship off the ice-fields of Carthenia. “I’m not going to die here. I won’t die here,” she croaked through her tears.
“We’re not going to die,” whispered Ryann, holding her tightly to his chest. “You survived that and we’ll make it through this, I promise.”
Angelique stepped back, wiping her tears away in embarrassment. She turned forlornly back to the breaker panel, tugging at the switches but the circuits were dead.
“Stop, just stop a moment,” said Ryann, reaching forward and taking her hand. “Look, let’s just go back through our options.”
“We don’t have any damn options!” she replied in frustration, staring down at the floor.
“Well, we’ve got air in the cabin — like you say, that should give us a little under two hours,” continued Ryann, ignoring Angelique and looking around for any inspiration. “We’ve still got our flight-suits — and my helmet; are you sure that we can’t get yours fixed up?” He looked to the crushed storage bin beneath Angelique’s chair at the navigation-console where the remains of her helmet were still wedged.
“I told you, it’s fried — like everything else,” she replied morosely.
“Okay, er, well I’ve got about one-hour-thirty in my helmet’s air-reserve — I could EVA out into the wreck-field — try and find a ship that might have some air tanks that are still intact — or, I go down into the engine deck and release a little bit of H-fuel. We’ve got emergency flares in the stowage, I could light the fuel, and if the Defiance is scanning they might see the explosion and send a scout group or something.”
“Blow stuff up,” sighed Angelique with a bleak smile. “Is that all you ever have Ryann? The Defiance has just watched the biggest Luminal ship you’ve ever seen park up alongside this wreck-field. They aren’t going to move a damn muscle for the next week. Either that or they’re already running — that would be the smart option.” She slumped down heavily against the navigation-console. “Face it Ryann, there’s no way out of this one.”
“No, I won’t accept that,” he replied, picking up his flight-helmet and pulling it over his head.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“The only thing I can,” he muttered, his voice muffled behind his visor as he locked the helmet into place. “If I can’t find a ship with some air, then I’m going to blow stuff up.”
“Ryann,” sighed Angelique.
“That’s all I’ve got Angelique.” He rummaged through one of the storage lockers for a pack of flares.
“Ryann, stop, it’s a hopeless plan. It’s too dangerous — you’ll get us both killed.”
“We’ll be alright — I’m not afraid,” he replied grim-faced.
“Ryann!” cried out Angelique in frustration, her bloodied head in her hands. “This isn’t about being scared! You’re never scared! I know that! That’s the problem! You’re just damn-well reckless! I mean, what in hell were you thinking, setting us down on the Ibis and just assuming that whoever was in that Patroller was friendly? Just because you’d met some old woman once who —”
“Oh come on,” Ryann retorted, his pride hurt. “I didn’t hear you complaining at the time — they’d just disabled the Ibis, how was I to know —”
“Oh my word, that’s it Ryann! Of course, that’s it!” Angelique’s face lit up in realisation. She stepped forwards grabbing Ryann by the arms and planted a kiss firmly upon the glass of his visor.
Ryann looked on, an expression of confusion spreading across his face.
“The Ibis!” exclaimed Angelique as she turned back to the open console, frantically collecting up her tool-roll. “I’d forgotten all about it! But it’s the nearest ship to us by far — if we can get across to it, then at least it might still have some more air!”
“I don’t know Angelique,” muttered Ryann, dragging off his flight-helmet. “That little Patroller shot her up pretty bad.”
“She was in nowhere near as bad a shape as we’re in,” she replied in excitement. “Her main power was out, but I didn’t see any major hull breaches. It’s the best hope we’ve got.”
“But Angelique, how are we going to get there? You said yourself, we’re dead in the water.”
“Well, the drive-system’s shot, but I
