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32
SILAS
Down in the hangar,I struggled not to be overcome by an overwhelming sense of doom. The hangar was nearly empty, all the ships crashed or destroyed. The remaining few were in poor condition and didn't offer much hope for my mission. Weighing my options, I desperately wanted to go back to the sanctuary. I wanted to pull Anya into my arms and kiss her.
I was so foolish to think that I, alone, could turn this disaster around. It was clear that Re'Utu had already made up his mind for us all. We were no longer in His light and warmth. That was why the sun had retreated behind the clouds and outside was a sheathed in a mist of grey. With a huff, I paced across the hangar. I had come this far. I owed it to my grandfather to do something.
"You just going to stand there or what?" a voice called, jolting me out of my thoughts.
Looking around quickly, I realized that the hangar was not altogether abandoned. It took me a moment to spot the source of the voice, but when he laughed, I recognized Jurak's head sticking out the side door of the ship directly in front of me.
I hurried over. "I'm sorry, I was just-"
"Get in. You'll have plenty of time to explain when we're in the air. Kiango never came." The laughter was.
"He's upstairs. I think he'll be okay." It wasn't much, but it was all I had to offer. Ember and Anya were doing everything they could for him. And I needed a pilot I could trust.
Climbing inside, I dropped my bundle of blankets and candles in a small cubby out of the way, feeling silly at having brought them along, and then poked my head into the cockpit. As long as the ship was running we wouldn't need them. The control panel was clearly damaged, but it appeared that the pilot had been hard at work jury-rigging a set of monitors together to replace the smashed screens.
"Will it fly?" I asked, trying not to give away my concern when I saw the mishmash of wires tied together above the console.
"She'll fly," Jurak said confidently. "Just depends on where you're trying to go."
That was not exactly the vote of confidence I was looking for. I had no idea where I was trying to go. "Are the comms working?"
Jurak shrugged. "We can make 'em work, I suppose."
"I just need to know if it still has a link to Imrys's ship."
Jurak looked at me with a humorless smile. "You're not just going to call him up and ask him to meet you out by the wood pile, are you? Because I'm not sure I want to put all my hard work to waste."
I shook my head with a laugh. "No, but I do mean to find out if he's still in the area and track him down. When we went through the storm, we hit something solid. I think it was his ship. If so, it might have gone down somewhere around here. I just want to do a little investigating."
"Fair enough. A little looking around never hurt anybody.” Jurak nodded, flipping a few switches and watching as the screens flickered to life and went through their startup procedure. “Settle in. The takeoff might be a bit bumpy."
I hardly had time to wind my way between the seats and drop into the one beside him before the old ship lunged forward and then jerked to an abrupt stop. I yelped with surprise, throwing my hands up to keep my face from smashing into the screen in front of me and glaring at Jurak.
"Sorry, friend. Still working out a few kinks."
I strapped myself in and clutched the armrests. The next time we started moving, things went smoother. We trundled through the bay door and out over the uneven fields, eventually gaining enough momentum to lift us into a wobbly takeoff.
As we rose over the roof of the palace, I braced myself. After everything that had happened, I believed that Imrys might be lurking nearby, just waiting for the opportunity to strike us down as soon as we poked our heads out of hiding. But the grey sky remained still and quiet and completely empty, as we circled the courtyard and came around to face where the storm had been.
Jurak pulled the engines back so we could hover for a minute and examine the landscape.
"What do you think?"
From here, I could see the remains of my own ship, protruding from the ground like an alien growth at the edge of the forest. I scanned across the distance, thinking.
"If we hit his ship, it probably went the opposite direction. I don't know if it was a direct hit or if his engines were still firing, but I think if we head that way, we'll know soon enough." I pointed, trying to guess the angle Imrys might have been deflected.
Jurak pushed the engines back up to speed and set our course. We flew over the fields and the servant's quarters. I spotted the small clearing where I had said my prayers under the full moon, supported by Kiango and Ember, and Anya. Sadness clutched at me, reminding of me of how much loss I had endured in such a short time. Anya was still down there somewhere, but she would never look at me again the way she did that night, when I first breathed Re'Utu's fires, when I had stepped into His waters. It pained me to think that the light in her eyes might not burn for me any longer. But the clearing was gone in a flash, and then we were crossing over scrubland and rocky crags. And then I spotted it.
"There."
