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She shook her head, keeping her hands over her face.
I backed the speeder up. I pulled it forward, but there wasn’t enough room on the road here to pull around, so I had to back up again.
Bang.
The speeder rocked.
Cypra tore her hands away from her face. “What was that?”
I tried to urge the speeder forward. But it wasn’t going to happen, because the back corner of the speeder was tilted downwards. “Blowout,” I said.
“What?”
“We’ve got a flat tire.” I turned off the speeder and thrust open the door. I climbed down the ladder to the ground.
“You have a spare, right?” she called down after me, her head poking out from my side of the speeder.
“I have a patch kit,” I called back. “These tires, they’re huge. Lugging around a spare, it’s not feasible.”
“O-okay,” she said.
What I didn’t say was that I was pretty sure the patch kit was going to be worthless. Because a loud sound like that, it probably meant that the tire was shredded.
I went around to the back of the vehicle to inspect.
Oh, yeah. I could already see that pieces of the tire were scattered around on the ground. This was bad. It was probably my fault. I hadn’t checked the speeder out before we took off, not thoroughly. I’d been distracted. This tire probably had some damage on it already, maybe a place that was weakened and then what happened was that when the tire was in use, the air pressure moved around and kept stretching that weak spot until… boom.
Now, if I was out here by myself, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I’d note where I left the vehicle and go back on foot. I’d have someone come out here and pick it up—probably after the Star Season was over so I could have a hover speeder come out here. Sun would be necessary to power the hover speeders, so it’d be a while. It would be inconvenient not having this speeder, but I’d manage.
With Cypra here, however, it was just bad.
“Holston?” came her voice. “You can fix it, right?”
I rubbed at my antlers and stared at the ruined tire, and I didn’t answer her.
“Holston?”
“I, uh, I fucked up, shei,” I called back to her.
“What do you mean?” It was her shrill voice again.
I sighed.
She was climbing down the ladder now. She alighted on the ground and came around to take in the tire and the pieces of exploded tire and her lips parted and she let out a little breathy noise of dismay. “You can’t patch that.”
“Not so much.”
“So… so… we don’t have a speeder?” Now, her voice was very shrill.
“I should have looked over the tires. I should have checked the pressure. I should have given the vehicle a better once over before we left. It’s on me. If I’d looked, I would have seen this.”
“Okay, but whocares?”
“Well, it’s my—”
“It’s the past. What do we donow?”
I blew out a breath and worried at the tip of one of my antlers with my thumb. “Uh, well, this ship of yours, what kind of shape is it in?”
