A Spaceman

Chapter 11--One week later: A Big Deal

So I'm damn good at crash landing. Even intoxicated. I still land the flaming, completely destroyed unflyable ship safely. I don't, as a completely random, in personal, example, cut off the legs of anyone I'm flying with. And I'm not the smartest guy in the universe. And I'm slightly intoxicated. But still. The people in my ship are alive. and still have legs. Even though the ship is on fire and will be almost completely unflyable ever. People in it still have legs. Did I mention my passengers still had legs?

"Will you quit going back in for alcohol?" Lizze bodily drags me away from the burning ship. Using her mind of course she's no where near it.

"I'm not gonna die, I was caught in one on fire like that and my flight partner had to cut off my legs to get me out," I say, but I relent because she's really worried. I have my backpack which has most of my emergency supply in it. The awesome stuff is just so flammable.

"That's really disturbing and you're still not getting more alcohol," she says, keeping firm hold of my arm.

"Where'd the Bible freaks go?" I ask, looking around. I saw them get out of the ship okay when I helped Lizzie get out before going back for my precious wonderful life saving alcohol.

"They ran off into the woods I don't know why-- I was too busy stopping you from running back into a burning ship for booze," Lizzie says, accusingly.

"I'm not gonna die we have been over that---anyway, they shouldn't have run off," I say.

She shrugs, as we look at the ship, which is smoldering.

"I might be able to get it running again----fucking Isylgyns," I say, looking up at the sky, it's daylight so I can't even see the remains of the fire-fight we narrowly avoided. Why the hell did their rogue ships attack us? We didn't have New America or New Russian markings meaning we were smugglers and therefore not worth shooting.

(it's not your fault) Lizzie looks at me, probably sensing my guilt. Obviously. I was flying. Even if I did get us all down. Complete with our legs. Legs fully attached.

"You okay?" I ask, rubbing soot or grease off her cheek and brushing her hair out of her face, fixing her headband which was loose from all we just went through.

(yes)

"We'll wait till it burns out, there might be more we can salvage, plus the guns we were smuggling, I'd sooner we were armed," I say.

"Where are we?" she asks.

"I'm pretty sure we're in New Russia, though I'm not positive I was focusing on landing us." with our legs.

(have you ever been here) she looks around.

"We did like a meeting thing in their city once, never like, out here," I say.

She looks out at the forest.

(should we be worried about the Bible freaks?)

"Nah, they'll come back if they get hungry. If not they'll find someone new to take care of them," I say, sitting down and fishing a beer out of my backpack.

Lizzie sits down next to me.

(it was scary to crash)

"Yeah, you know I'm not gonna let you get hurt," I say, putting an arm around her shoulder.

(you remembered getting hurt)

"Yeah," I sigh.

**

"Five more eaten, forty eight to go," Sophie has gotten remarkably on board with this plan.

"Thankfully it's not a highly staffed base," I observe. We're doing the washing up. It feels sexist to make her do all of it. Plus the cleaning is cathartic.