“Do I make you feel trapped?”
Her head snapped up to look at him. “What? No, of course not.”
“Do you trust me?”
She shuffled from one foot to the other, not answering. T’arq’s stomach twisted, and he pushed a hand to his abdomen to quell the unease. He forced himself to smile in what he hoped was a reassuring way and sat in the pilot’s seat. He patted the flight engineer’s chair next to his. Krystal looked from him to the chair and back again, uncertainty written across her face.
“Come on, have a seat. We won’t go anywhere until you’re confident in my ability to keep you safe. I promise.”
Her formerly tense posture eased, and she sat in the chair. “Oh!”
“Do you like it?” He felt warmth spread through him at the look of pleasure on her face.
“You had this made for me, didn’t you? How? When?” Her eyes were wide as she looked at him.
It had only been a few hours since their meeting with the chief engineer, but T’arq had been busy. He had pulled in favors and had a custom seat made for the diminutive human. He had noticed the step stool that she carried around when she worked, and that the benches and seats were too high for her to use comfortably.
“If you’re going to be effective, you need to be comfortable.” He tried to pass it off.
“But it’s just one flight. I would have been fine, T’arq,” she reached across to pat his hand. Small fingers brushed lightly over his. They had been intimately pressed together, passionately so, and yet this small touch of her hand was so much more than that.
It was a gift.
He cleared his throat and pulled his hand away. No, not going there. He shifted in the seat.
“T’arq?”
“So, the controls for the flight engineer are in the touch panels,” he flicked a switch on the armrest of her chair and a panel slid out of a recess in front of them and came to rest within arm's reach. T’arq tapped a series of controls, Krystal watching attentively.
It didn’t take long before she was flicking through screens and tapping away as if she had been born knowing how to access these controls.
T’arq settled back and smiled, watching her as she explored.
Krystal looked away from the controls, pushing the panel back into place. She rubbed her arms and sighed, before turning toward him in her seat, a pained expression on her face. “I can’t do this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t go on the test flight with you.”
He raised an eyebrow.
She shifted, her fingers tapping a staccato rhythm against the arm of the chair. “It’s bad enough being on the Zataras. It took me weeks to get used to it. I hate water, you see.”
“Water?” What had water to do with anything?
She sighed, rubbing her temples. “It’s not the water, not really. It’s the lack of air. Under water or in space. It doesn’t matter. There’s no air. I’m terrified that I won’t be able to breathe out there. That something will happen, and I’ll suffocate.” Her eyes were filled with tears as she spoke.
T’arq’s chest felt tight, like a band was squeezing him and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. “Krystal—”
“So, you see. I can’t do it. I can’t do the test flight. You’ll just have to find someone else.” The words rushed from her as she scrambled from the seat and rushed from the ship.
