Chapter Twenty-Nine
Their little unnamedship had flown like a tin can full of concrete through the atmosphere, but at least it was a tin can with wings and lift, so Allie managed to make it to the clearing. Just because the ship was designed to fly planetside didn’t mean it flew well.
“Have we landed? My stomach is still lurching up and down,” Becca said.
“We’re safely on the ground,” Allie said.
“Well. Okay. I’ll tell my stomach to stop doing that...thing...then.”
Ben unfastened his harness and went to Becca’s side and rested his hand on her shoulder. “You’re doing good.”
“I haven’t thrown up. I’m doing great,” she corrected him. She did look pretty green.
Copta stood and clung to her chair for a minute. “I should go check on our prisoner. He’s probably wishing we had spaced him.”
“Cells have restraint harnesses for hard takeoffs and landings.”
“That was more than a hard landing. That was one of the levels of hell. It is said that Allah will make smooth the path to misery for those who are foolish enough to think themselves above a need for others and without need for the love of Allah. If I were a superstitious woman, I would start to wonder if my father was not right that I am a fool on a smooth path to misery.”
“God’s not upset, and you know it,” Ben said in the weary tones of someone who had suffered this argument before.
Allie really didn’t comprehend the dynamic between the three of them: Copta, Ben, and Becca. However, she was starting to think she understood a lot less than she’d assumed in the past. She kept her mouth shut and her opinions to herself.
Copta grinned at him. “Which is why it is good that I’m not a superstitious woman. I know that it was your plan to land in a secluded area without being seen. That means you put us through that ordeal.”
Ben grimaced. “Go back to blaming Allah and that whole smooth-path thing, okay?”
“You are blasphemous.”
“Yep,” Ben agreed. “Are you okay? Really okay?”
Copta waved him off in the universal gesture ofyeah yeah. “I will check on our SC guest.”
Becca pushed herself up. “And I’ll make sure that all our systems are in one piece and Allie didn’t break the engine or something.”
“Hey, for a long-atmosphere landing in a spacecraft, that was damn good flying,” Allie defended herself. She was even fairly sure she hadn’t broken anything. Hopefully.
