My heartbeat quickened, matching the intensity of the ship’s blaring alarms. I sat straight up in my seat, and looked towards Strevan for guidance of some sort.

  “What do we do??” I screeched.

  “You’re asking me?” He replied, “I started this game literally the same minute you did, how would I know?!”

  I connected my console to the ship’s interface, and took direct mental control of its movements. Suddenly, my field of view expanded. My vision spread to the outside of the ship, giving me a perfect 360 view of our surroundings. It was with this new change of perception that I understood our situation.

  “We’re screwed,” I said, losing all hope.

  There were 6 vessels surrounding us, all closing in. On instinct, I steered the ship towards the largest gap between them, and shouted, “Strevan, full speed!”

  He complied without answer, and our ship lurched forwards. Noticing our movement, the enemy began to fire. Bolts of green energy shot from their weapons, and only by sheer luck did I manage to avoid the first barrage.

  Our ship soared past a smaller vessel. The only direction to go was the planet in the distance.

  Our ship was nearly at full speed when I was almost shaken from my chair. The enemy had landed a hit, and myriad error screens filled my visual display, forcing me to manually clear them.

  “Oh, that’s not good,” I said, breaking into a cold sweat.

  “What broke?” Jace called, attempting to be heard over the still-blaring alarms.

  “Uh—everything.” I said, nonchalantly.

  He didn’t have time to reply before the lights flickered off, and my senses were cut from the ships feed.

  We looked at each other in fear, before the rumbling began. The ship had entered the planet’s atmosphere.

  I gripped the sides of my seat tightly as I awaited death, Strevan began shouting expletives, and the world quaked around us.

  A side of the ships walling tore off, and I could feel intense pressure pulling me towards the breach. The seatbelt keeping me less than an inch from death was my only saving grace. I could see Strevan shouting something towards me, but I couldn’t hear him over the intense rush of sounds.

  From the breach, I could see earth, then sky, then earth again as the ship was caught in a violent spin, throwing my body violently in different directions. Then, with a resounding crash, my vision went dark.

  It was with no small amount of surprise that I opened my eyes. The air was still, quiet, and only through various glints of sunlight in the ship’s structure could I see. I put a hand to my aching stomach, and undid the seat buckle that was pressing into me. I slipped, and gravity pulled me to the ground. I floundered in the dark for moment before I stood to my feet, and realized the ship was on its side.

  “Strevan?” I called, my voice weak.

  I heard a grunt to the side, and following the sound, I found him laying down, with a beam of sunlight highlighting his face. With some effort I crouched down and shook his shoulder gently. He groaned and opened his eyes.

  “Did we die?” He asked, his voice coming out as a croak.

  I gripped one of his hands and tried to pull him to his feet, responding, “Not yet. I thought we were toast.”

  He stood up with some effort, and lightly touched the back of his head before wincing. His grimace made him look almost as roughed up as I felt.

  “If this weren’t a game, I think we would be.”

  I just nodded before glancing around in an attempt to measure the damage to the ship. Sighing, I took him by the hand and led towards one of the larger holes, one we could slip out of the ship from. The entrance to the bridge was nearly vertical, and I didn’t have confidence in my ability to climb through it.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  I squeezed out of the ship’s breach slowly, and shifted my balance to slip down the hull. With a small hop at the bottom, I dismounted and took a look around.

  The surroundings were a forest, but pulverized by our ship’s descent; thousands of trees lay desecrated, broken from our fall. Worse than that, however, was the condition of the ship. The side facing the ground looked as if it had been through a cheese grater, and I winced at the imagined cost of repairs.

  During my quiet contemplation, Strevan slid down from the breach clumsily, and nearly ran straight into me from the momentum. I gave a girlish yelp as he bumped into me, and only his hands steadying me prevented an embarrassing fall.

  “Shit— sorry!” He said, still holding my shoulders.

  “Uh, no biggie,” I said, face flushing. I took a short step away from him.

  Why are his hands so big?

  He rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed, before taking a look around. His lips lowered into a frown as he came to a similar conclusion to myself. I caught myself staring at them for a few moments too long, before I lowered my gaze to the forest floor.

  “What now?” He asked. “I don’t think I saw anything about repairing ships in the trailer. Are we just stuck here?”

  “I’m not sure. There must be a way to repair it or find a different ship. Why the hell did those guys shoot us down in the first place? It’s not like we were holding anything important.”

  He looked at me thoughtfully, before replying, “I didn’t even think about it. I just kind of assumed they did it because they’re supposed to be enemies.”

  I bit my lip, stressed, before saying, “Regardless, we need to do something. I don’t want to be caught out in the dark. We don’t know what’s on this planet.”

  He looked at me with a concerned look, nodded, then began walking back towards the ship.

  “There might be some things in here we can use, I’ll go check. See if you can find something to burn for a fire. Just don’t go too far.”

  “Alright,” I replied.

  It didn’t take long, considering the trees that were obliterated. A short time later, Strevan slid back out of the ship’s breach, carrying two bags, and saw me rifling through my stack of wood. He set the bags down and took a look at what I had gathered.

  “A lot of this won’t work. Too green, it’d be too difficult to start a fire with. We need something dead to start it.”

  I looked at him in shock. Too green? I stood up, and woefully glared at my hard-earned stack.

  “You could have told me that before I gathered wood for 20 minutes.”

  He looked towards me, eyes half closed in irritation.

  We stared at each other for a few moments before I glanced to the side, a heat rising in my cheeks.

  “Fine,” I said, “I’ll go gather the stupid wood for the stupid fire.”

  As I began to walk away, I felt something grab my wrist and pull me back.

  I looked back towards him, surprised, and saw his face, twisted into something like hurt.

  “Why do you always do this, Syl?”

  “What?” I asked, surprised.

  “You just walk off. You always do this when you’re mad at me.”

  We stood there silently for a moment, hand in hand, and my irritation cooled.

  I pulled my hand from his and folded my arms.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Ok,” he replied simply.

  We stood a moment more before the two of us began to gather wood again, him pointing out viable pieces to me as we worked together. My irritation rose again as I pushed my hair from my face for the hundredth time.

  “Ugh, why didn’t I get something to tie my hair?” I complained, as we began to gather the wood into a pile.

  He looked towards me and smiled gently.

  “Need a hand?”

  “Yes, please,” I said, exasperated.

  I turned my back towards him, and flipped my hair over my shoulders. A moment later I felt his fingers gently gather my hair. I felt my cheeks warm up as they brushed my ears and neck.

  He took something from one of the bags, and tied my hair into a simple ponytail. I turned my head experimentally, and felt hair brush the nape of my neck, but remain in place.

  I gave him a big smile, saying, “Thank you!”

  He gave a gentle smile back before leaning over the pile of wood again. His sturdy hands took a few thin pieces, and stripped the bark from them. He tore it up into thin bits, and poured them on the ground into a small pile. After, he set up a simple stack in the shape of a teepee over it.

  “How are you so good at this?” I asked as he continued.

  I watched in amazement as he rubbed a stick over a piece of wood he had notched with a knife, grunting with effort. He took a small break to catch his breath and answer.

  “Remember that TV show we used to watch?” He asked, a shameful grin breaking across his face.

  “Yeah?” I replied, trying to recall what he was talking about.

  “Well, when I went camping with my family last year, I got obsessed with it. I kept trying different fire-making methods with my uncles. Barely got it to work last time.” He laughed a little at the remembrance.

  “Of course you did,” I replied, and sat next to the fire-to-be.

  It took nearly ten straight minutes of effort and sweating for him to finally get an ember, and I almost had a heart attack when I thought he’d lost it before getting the kindling to start.

  “Thought I lost it,” He said, laughing, and lifted his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face.

  My eyes flickered over his stomach and chest, and I couldn’t pull my eyes from it until his shirt lowered again.

  I looked towards my feet, quietly, as he picked up a random stick and poked at the logs, adjusting the fire.

  “I found some food and water in the ship, but we only have a few days before it’s out,” Strevan said, absentmindedly.

  “Maybe someone will find us before then,” I replied.

  “The only ones that know where we are the space-pirate guys, and I don’t want them anywhere close to you.”

  I didn’t reply.

  We silently ate our rations as the sun lowered on the horizon, and I shivered a bit from a cool breeze that cut through my jacket. Damn tank top.

  “Cold?” Strevan asked.

  “A bit,” I replied, nodding.

  Wordlessly, he stood up and sat next to me, pressing his warm body to mine. I was about to complain, but the heat from his body saved me from the chill I’d been getting.

  Neither of us said a thing as we sat there. I couldn’t tell if he was as embarrassed as I was, but he turned his head away from my hair, for some reason.

  Maybe a stray hair tickled his nose?

  Another breeze bit through my clothes, and I instinctively pressed myself closer to Strevan’s chest. He stiffened for a moment, before saying, “Syl…?”

  I looked up at his face, and saw the fire reflecting in his eyes. He stared back, each of us unmoving. I saw his throat move as he swallowed, and was about to say something.

  A noise like a cross between screeching and howling was suddenly heard in the distance. I froze, fearfully looking towards the direction it’d come from.

  “…”

  “...Let’s get back in the ship,” Strevan said, quietly. He took me by the hand, stomped the fire out, and quickly helped me climb back into the breach we’d exited from earlier. As we sat, huddled in the dark, I looked at him seriously.

  “I think it’s time we log out. Fuck this,” I said, my heart still pounding.

  He nodded absentmindedly, suddenly becoming thoughtful.

  “Yeah…yeah let’s do that.”

  Without further prompting, I commanded my console to open, and pressed log out.

  As my vision faded to black, I saw Strevan look at me with an expression I couldn’t identify.