Part I: Leaving Tyrorken

Jyra stared at the mound of soil that covered her brother’s grave. The scraping of shovels on clay ceased and the two gravediggers dumped the last of the loose dirt in place. They both touched the fingertips of their right hands to their foreheads as they passed Jyra. Dust gathered on her black slacks and button-up shirt, changing them to the caramel color of the earth and sky. Tears descended through the dust that collected on her cheeks. She wiped her eyes and suppressed another wave of sadness that threatened to bring her to her knees. She glared at the oil rigs in the distance, metallic spikes on the horizon.

As darkness settled around her, Jyra walked home, criticizing the memories she shared about her brother, feeling that she could have delivered them better. She tried to forget the most vivid image of all, the logo of Tyrorken Fuels, that headed the message she received a week ago informing her and her parents that, “a rare accident occurred at one of our oil rigs today. We feel great sorrow and sympathy to report that Dario Kyzen was killed as a result of this tragic disaster.”

Her parents had heard the news an hour after it happened, because they worked as advertisers for Tyrorken Fuels. They had suggested their son sign on with a new maintenance crew and he was working on rigs three weeks later. The oil company employed about eighty percent of the residents of the planet Tyrorken. Dario had worked there for two years; both his mother and father had been there for thirty-eight. Jyra knew her older brother was smart and skilled enough to get whatever job he wanted, but he insisted on the rig work.

“It keeps me in shape and it’s challenging,” he told Jyra after his first week. “It’s the best thing for me right now.”

“You sound like dad,” Jyra had said.

Jyra reached her street and trudged over the solid clay, stuffing her hands in her pockets. She had meant to walk slower; she wasn’t ready to go inside yet. It was hard to know where to go that would feel closer to her brother.

In addition to the pain of loss, Jyra worried about her apprenticeship at Jed’s Garage, where she worked under the supervision of her friend Craig. He had grown up with her and Dario in the neighborhood until his parents moved to Mereda where he’d lived ever since. Jyra was nearly twenty-five and didn’t make any money for her work at the garage. She had gained experience as a mechanic, but the job didn’t provide her with any qualifications to be a pilot. Craig had suggested the idea of the apprenticeship and she agreed in order to spend time away from home. Meanwhile, her parents had been “encouraging her” (their words) or “nagging her” (Jyra’s perspective) to apply for work at Tyrorken Fuels.

“The company has given us everything we have,” Tadwin had said, when he and his wife first suggested the idea. “It’s a great way to make a living.”

“It’s been a rewarding experience for me,” Sherlia added, undaunted when Jyra rolled her eyes.

Jyra went around the side of the house and climbed through her open bedroom window to avoid talking to her parents. She pulled a tattered book from a shelf. She opened the pages, revealing images of different spaceships and a wealth of information about their technical specifications. The book also included basic information for pilots from regular operation to dealing with onboard crises. It was the first gift Dario had given her when she was ten.

When Tadwin and Sherlia saw their children looking at the book together, they smiled and examined it with them. Their interest in it, however, ended when Jyra expressed a sincere desire to become a pilot. Tadwin mentioned something about it being a “hard and unpredictable life.” Sherlia explained the “danger and complications” of space travel. Her parent’s dismissal of her dream did not deter Jyra in the least.

As she thumbed through the book now, sitting on her bed and pushing her hair out of her face, Jyra realized that she always used her wish to become a pilot as an alternative to applying to Tyrorken Fuels when discussing her future with her parents. When she was ten years younger, this reply placated Tadwin and Sherlia who assumed the desire was only a phase and she would grow out of it. Unfortunately, having taken no action to become a pilot, Jyra’s hope to explore space became less of a viable alternative to oil work and sounded more like a childish excuse.

Jyra closed the book and returned it to the shelf after looking at Dario's note scribbled on the title page. Her gaze traveled out of the window to the sky, where a small ship pushed through the polluted clouds. Jyra turned and saw the door to Dario’s room across the hall from her own. It had always been something of a sanctuary, a home within a home. Jyra walked toward it, an idea growing in her mind that temporarily blocked out grief. While Dario had supported his sister’s wish to become a pilot, she never would have left Tyrorken because she would leave her brother behind to work in the oil fields. Jyra paused at the open door of her room, unsure if her knees would support her as she registered the significance of the realization.

She stepped in front of her dresser, checked herself in the mirror, shrugged, and headed for the kitchen to grieve with her family. Jyra paused at the end of the hallway, watching her parents. They sat at the table, Tadwin stroking his wife's arm with one hand and clutching a flask in the other. The lamp in the corner threw a dim glow across the kitchen and candles flickered near a forgotten bowl of pasta.

Sherlia stared at the funeral program on the table. She picked at the lower corner that contained the small logo for Tyrorken Fuels; they handled the funeral arrangements and costs. Jyra felt her jaw clench as the image appeared in her mind, knowing her mother pitched the idea to include it on programs to increase the presence of the logo at funerals the company supported. Sherlia scowled at the green stamp of two oil rig towers that bisected the globe of the planet then looked up and saw Jyra.

Tadwin turned in his chair and, leaving the flask on the table, extended his arm to Jyra. She walked across the room and placed her arm around her father's shoulder and stepped into his partial embrace.

"How're you doing?" he asked. She shrugged in reply.

"There's some pasta here," Sherlia said, folding the program and pushing it aside and indicating the bowl.

"I don't feel like eating."

"Neither do I," Sherlia said, as Tadwin took a nip of Wistful Prairie whisky.

"How was the walk home?" he asked.

"Lonely," Jyra said, her throat constricting. She left her father's side and leaned against the counter. "I feel like he's still here."

"In some ways he is," Sherlia said.

"Why did he have to go work at that awful place?" Jyra burst out, her tears turning the kitchen into a swimming blur. She felt both of her parents approach and pull her into a large hug. They all shook with silent sobs. Jyra smelled her mother's homemade juniper perfume and the alcohol on her father's breath. The hug could have lasted for a minute or two; Jyra lost her sense of time.

When they broke apart, Tadwin drank from his flask and looked at his weeping daughter. He brushed his own eyes with his sleeve.

"He wanted a job," he said. It took Jyra a moment to connect the answer to her question. She sniffed and glared at her father, similarly to how she regarded the oil rig towers beyond Dario's grave.

"He didn't need to go work there," she said. "He could have worked anywhere else. He could have been a teacher or a doctor."

"Can this conversation wait?" Sherlia pleaded. She cast severe glances at both her husband and daughter.

"You hate that TF did his funeral," Jyra said, heat rising in her face as she addressed her mother. "I saw the way you were looking at the program when I came in."

"We couldn't have afforded anything nearly as nice as TF supplied for the service," Tadwin said.

"Of course not," Jyra said. "They've kept you two under their thumb and it has paid off for them. They limit your power by limiting your wages. Then they try to appease us by compensating us when they killed Dario. He mentioned that TF recently relaxed some safety measures."

She sank against the counter, face in her hands. It appeared as though her parents were swelling with rage, offended by their daughter's outburst. They exchanged glances and took deep breaths, preparing to speak.

“I’m going to bed,” Jyra said, before they could answer.

She stopped in the bathroom and splashed cold water on her cheeks, rinsing the dust into the drain. Jyra pulled her hair back to get a better look at her face, trying to avoid thinking about the numerous occasions when she retreated to the bathroom and Dario came to comfort her. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been this miserable. Her eyes were bloodshot and her sides hurt from crying for most of the day. Jyra realized she still expected to hear the bathroom door creak open and see her brother making a tentative entrance.

After she returned to her room, Jyra pulled off her shirt and slacks and lay back on her bed; the night was too warm for sheets and blankets. Hot gusts of air blew through the window. As she rested her head on her pillow and watched the patterns in the clouds, Jyra felt short of breath. She stood up and leaned out on the windowsill, inhaling the evening breeze. It came from the southwest, which meant the artificial oxygen would be pushed away from her neighborhood.

Once Jyra took several gulps of air, her head ceased spinning and the tingling sensation disappeared from her fingers. She didn’t leave her spot at the window and stared up at the perpetual cloud cover. Thoughts of what lay beyond them teased her and Jyra found herself stooping to extract the book again. She read the entire volume many times, but she always found something new. It was comforting to lift the book into her lap, its covers chilling the tops of her thighs and Jyra began reading, paying close attention to the fundamentals of flying a Micro class spaceship.

*                                                                              

She woke up with the book still sitting in her lap. Jyra had leaned back on her pillow and fallen asleep while reading about stabilizer positions during preflight assessments. She pushed the book aside and stood up, rubbing her eyes while yawning. Heat was already pouring through the open window. Jyra picked a pair of cutoffs from the floor and stepped into them. She felt much older today, but her appearance didn’t show it. The skin around her eyes was taut from crying and her brown irises glittered beneath her similarly colored hair. Jyra inherited her small nose and lips from her mother. Her hands were rough and weathered from working in the shop with Dario, welding and building the tree house in the juniper in the backyard. Jyra was stronger than she looked and, until Dario had started working, they were evenly matched in arm wrestling.

Once she pulled on a short-sleeve shirt, Jyra bent closer to her mirror as she pressed two fingers onto a plate of ground charcoal then smudged her forehead above the cleft between her dark eyebrows. She tied her hair back to make sure the Mourning Mark was visible. It wasn’t just Dario’s death that brought on the feeling of growing older. Jyra leaned out her window so she could catch a glimpse of the juniper above the house. It looked so tall now. The changes were happening with each passing day and Jyra suddenly understood she needed to make a change of her own. She gave “Ships of the Kaosaam System” a determined look as she laced up her boots and decided to keep reading about stabilizer positions after breakfast.

Jyra pulled the pasta from the previous night from the cold box along with some marinated chicken, glaring at the logo for Tyrorken Fuels stamped across the poultry packaging. She prepared a plate, walked out to the porch, and sat on the steps staring at the smoggy sky between bites. Jyra couldn't look anywhere on the porch that didn't have some association with Dario. She used to chase him and he would jump over the stairs making spaceship sound effects. He would read for hours in the far right corner. Many times, Jyra could recall sitting there with him while they flipped through “Ships of the Kaosaam System” together.

Even when the sun broke through the clouds for a moment, lighting up the street and warming Jyra’s skin, the pain returned and she stopped eating. The neighborhood was empty, which meant the offices and oil fields of Tyrorken Fuels were full. The single level houses along the road were in various stages of disrepair. The porch across from Jyra was sinking away from the front door. Two houses down from the dilapidated porch, tarpaper was exposed on the roof when large patches of the shingles had been torn away during the last dust storm. The rough and warped clapboard siding on all the houses was breaking loose; Jyra had to step around one piece that hung on the wall by a single nail when she walked back to access the house through her window.

Jyra remembered a dream from her youth of opening the door in the morning and finding that the house had moved during the night. Instead of the woebegone street, the porch opened to a jungle thick with trees and vines. Slamming and opening the door revealed a new scene every time. At one point during the dream, Jyra had eagerly thrown the door back to see soldiers running at her across an arid tundra, moments from swarming the porch. The next morning, an annoyed Dario told his sister to quit slamming the door, because of course Jyra tried the door game as soon as she woke up.

She was so preoccupied with the memory of the dream, Jyra didn’t see the man approaching until he was on the dirt track to the porch. He wore the green uniform of a Tyrorken Fuels worker and his neck bulged out of the collar. Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead beneath the hat that matched his shirt, vest, and slacks. She set her plate aside and stood up, wiping her hands on her cutoffs. He glanced briefly at the Mourning Mark and pressed his lips together and lowered his gaze.

“I am Derek Firkens with Tyrorken Fuels,” he said, stopping at the foot of the steps. Jyra stood on the porch. “Are Tadwin and Sherlia Kyzen available?”

“No, they’re at work.” Derek blinked, and ran the back of his hand through the sweat on his forehead.

“Well, I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “It looks like I came all the way out here for nothing. I could have made the delivery at the office.”

“What delivery?” Derek blinked again; he was clearly uncomfortable.

“It is addressed to Tadwin and Sherlia Kyzen,” he said. “I thought they’d be here.”

“Does it have to do with Dario?” Jyra asked. “I’m his sister, Jyra.”

“It does,” Derek said slowly. “I was his manager out on the rigs.” Jyra considered this for a moment, thinking quickly.

“Why don’t you come inside and have some juice?” she suggested. “You can leave the message here. I hate to think you wasted your time.” If Derek looked uncomfortable before, now he shuffled his feet and seemed uncertain.

“All right,” he said. Jyra scooped up her plate and went into the house followed by the thumping of Derek’s boots.

She poured some jeldsin berry juice into a glass and set it on the table next to the funeral program. Derek sat down and took a sip of the sweet beverage as Jyra chose the chair opposite him. The man downed half the glass and Jyra caught him glancing at the program.

“I’m sorry about the accident,” Derek finally said, wiping the lingering juice off his lips. “I should already be heading back to the office, but my conscious has overridden orders this time.” Jyra narrowed her eyes and turned her head slightly to look at him.

“Why, what happened?”

“This business of TF getting involved in funerals is…I don’t agree with it,” Derek said, choosing his words carefully.

“Neither do I,” Jyra said. “It’s sick and it’s all about marketing and I had to put up with it yesterday when we buried my brother.” She felt tears burning the edges of her eyes, but she resisted the emotion.

“You have my sincerest sympathies,” Derek said, taking another swig of juice. “This message is about Dario in a way, but it’s also about you.”

“What? I have no association with TF besides my family. I’ve never even applied there.”

Derek reached into his vest and pulled out a pale yellow envelope. He placed it on top of the program.

“It’s explained in here. I’d appreciate it if you don’t mention me when you discuss it with your parents. I could lose my job, but I couldn’t do this to another family.” He pushed himself out of the chair and walked toward the door. Jyra ran after him.

“Wait!” Derek kept walking but stopped at the bottom of the steps and turned around to listen.

“Why did you do this? Why my family?” Derek’s gaze traveled to the Mourning Mark. He touched his own forehead, extended the fingers, and touched the charcoal smudge. Jyra was surprised to see tears gathering in his eyes.

“Dario was a gifted man,” he said. “My whole team is taking the day off to remember him. It’s easy to forget who you are out in the fields, but Dario inspired everyone on the platform. Kept spirits up. You probably know better than anyone the presence he had. I couldn’t casually deliver that insensitive letter to his family.” He surveyed the shabby houses and looked back at Jyra. “Both you and Dario deserve better.”

Derek turned and set off toward Mereda. Jyra remained on the porch, leaning on the railing, in the wake of the bewildering encounter. Presently, she made her way back to the table, opened the envelope, and started reading.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Kyzen,

Following the tragic death of Dario Kyzen, Tyrorken Fuels funded his funeral expenses as part of the company’s Employee Compensation Act. At TF, we believe that employees and their families come first and we strive to uphold that belief. Assisting with memorial matters is one way we hope to further improve our relationship with the global community.

Recently, we have documented a sharp increase in work-related fatalities. We take issues of safety and oversight of worker competence seriously. Our efforts to increase safety measures have not changed the unfortunate trend of worker deaths. In order to protect TF and ensure that it can continue to be effective and efficient, we have placed some conditions upon the Employee Compensation Act, specifically regarding funeral compensation.

Productivity is an essential part of what has led to the company’s success in addition to strict financial responsibility. Our records indicate you chose the New Employee condition. Please submit all records for Jyra Kyzen who you selected to be the new employee. Her training will begin after we process her records. Failure to comply will be considered violation of a contract and you will be prosecuted accordingly.

Sincerely,

Terrence J. Biggs

Director of ECA Office

Tyrorken Fuels

Jyra gripped the table as her knees shook and she fell into the chair, knocking Derek’s empty glass over. It rolled sideways, tumbled, and shattered on the rough floorboards. Once again, her comprehension of a significant revelation pushed her sadness aside. She clutched the letter in her fingers, crumpling the paper.

Questions hissed inside her head like flares as Jyra stomped back to her room. How could her parents do this to her? How could they be so careless? How would TF punish them? Jyra slammed her door and pulled a heavy canvas duffel bag from under her bed. She opened her dresser drawers and seized fistfuls of clothes, which she dumped on the floor. Jyra took a photo of Dario from the corner of her mirror, closed up the charcoal dish, shut her small jewelry box, and added them all to the pile in the middle of her room. She went into the bathroom and grabbed her soap and teeth cleaners.

“Conditions,” Jyra muttered to herself. “I wonder what other conditions they had to choose from?” She began stuffing the pile on her floor into the duffel. She picked “Ships of the Kaosaam System” off the shelf, put Dario’s picture inside the front cover, put the book on top of everything and cinched the bag shut. She stood up, breathing hard and stared at the bag, feeling half prepared to leave and half afraid of the consequences. The front door slammed.

Jyra strode into the hallway and up to the living room. Her parents stood in front of the door.

“When were you going to tell me?” Jyra demanded.

“Tell you what?” Tadwin said. Jyra crossed to the table, grabbed the already crinkled letter, and thrust it at her father. Sherlia gave her daughter a suspicious glance and read over her husband’s shoulder.

“How did you get this?” Tadwin said.

“Someone from TF dropped it off and suggested I open it.”

“This letter isn’t addressed to you.”

“I don’t care!” Jyra said. “You sold me to TF. I never wanted to work there!”

“Jyra—” Sherlia began.

“Don’t even talk to me! This funeral compensation scam was your idea.” She stared at her father.

“Why did you do this? Why did you pick that condition? Why did you have TF put on the funeral at all? It’s an insult to me and Dario!”

“We couldn’t begin to pay for a funeral,” Tadwin said. “You need to be supporting yourself in less than a year and you have shown no interest in that. This is not a scam. Your mother and I thought we were helping you be more independent and, as it turned out, we were able to afford a decent funeral for Dario. If you don’t follow through with this, we’ll be in a lot of trouble.”

“Well I’m glad I had a say in the matter,” Jyra said. “You did this to yourselves. What happens if I die on a rig?”

“You don’t have to work on a rig,” Sherlia said quietly.

“I don’t have to work for TF and I’m not going to stay here any longer.” Tadwin and Sherlia stepped together as Jyra headed back to her room. She grabbed her duffel bag, hoisted it onto her shoulder, and returned to the living room. Her parents’ expressions changed immediately.

“Jyra, where are you going?” Tadwin said.

“Away,” Jyra replied as she pushed past her parents. She pulled the door open, stepped onto the porch, and turned around. “I’m going to be a pilot.”

“Jyra, please wait. Let us explain what’s going on,” her mother said.

“I’m sorry,” Jyra said as the porch creaked beneath her. “The letter told me more than you have.” She descended the steps and headed onto the road bound for Mereda.

*                                                                 

After several hours of walking, the sun was descending behind the clouds. Jyra felt her bag pressing into the sweat on her back. She proceeded down the juniper-lined road, checking behind periodically to see if Tadwin was following. Jyra knew she could stay with Craig until she figured where to go next. An acrid smell filled her nose and fumes stung her eyes. She wrapped her face in a handkerchief and pressed on as the wind and stench grew stronger.

The lines of trees on either side of the road began to change. The trunks were deformed and the foliage shriveled and twisted; after a few more steps, the trees were completely dead and then disappeared altogether. The scattered oil rigs were all that remained standing on the rolling dunes.

The road curved upward following the contour of packed earth, an unnatural ridge. Jyra shifted her duffel on her back and climbed the hill, blinking the burning sensation from her eyes. She stepped off the road near the crest of the ridge as a worker bus glided past, heading in the opposite direction. Jyra looked across the road and observed how much the mine had expanded since the last time she saw it.

The ground she stood on used to be under the prairie, but machines dug it up to access the oil that pooled in the crust of the planet. Piles of excavated dirt spread out like mountain ranges all around the mine. The caramel-colored earth at the surface became, dark brown, gray, and then black at the bottom of the hole that was the size of a meteor crater. Jyra could see the hydraulic shovels chewing into the walls at the bottom of the mine, simultaneously spreading the dimensions of the pit outward and downward. From her vantage point on the nearby ridge, they looked like they were the size of her index finger, but one of the clanking shovels could dig up a block of Jyra’s neighborhood with a single scoop. Near the edge of the mine, cranes that stood three times taller than the oil rig towers lifted steel hoppers of oil-soaked clay out of the pit.

All the machines coughed exhaust, but as Jyra continued walking, she saw what irritated her eyes and the source of the worst odors. Among the ridges of dirt, a processing plant belched smoke and fumes from eight stacks. Inside the corrugated metal walls, the plant separated the oil from the earth and performed rudimentary refining procedures so the oil could be transported through pipelines. The processes created the harsh byproducts that were pumped into the atmosphere. Most of the clouds in the sky of Tyrorken resulted directly from processing oil. Unable to breakdown into precipitation, the smoke hung over the planet, a perpetual blanket of smog.

Jyra bent her head lower and walked on trying to ignore the enormous Tyrorken Fuels logo splashed on the side of the processing plant. The dull thrumming of engines and motors droned across the prairie and made Jyra’s ears throb.  She had to slow down as the air quality diminished near the plant. Even when fresh oxygen returned to her nostrils, Jyra had to sit down on the side of the road and rest. It was well after midnight when she wearily rapped her knuckles on the door of Craig’s house.

He opened it and switched on the living room light. Craig rubbed his eyes with his hands that were still stained with grease from the garage. Jyra knew he had been working long hours recently; he couldn’t even make it to Dario’s funeral.

“Hey, Jyra.” He gave her a hug and hitched his pajama bottoms up around his waist and surveyed the street. Jyra stepped over the threshold; her bag nearly threw her off balance as she lowered it to the floor. He crossed behind her, picked up a glass of water from the end table, and held it out. She emptied it with one gulp. Despite her fatigue, Jyra’s gaze traveled across the pillow and blanket on the couch and the alarm clock on the end table. She also reflected on Craig’s lack of surprise at her arrival. Jyra sank into a chair.

“You were waiting for me?” she asked.

“Of course. I knew you didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“How did you know I left my folks?”

Craig paced in front of the couch, twisting his fingers together.

 “Look, I need your promise that you will not breathe a word of what I am about to tell you to anyone else unless I tell you otherwise.” Jyra felt a sense of urgency banish her exhaustion; she had never heard Craig speak this way.

“All right, I won’t say anything, I promise. Just tell me what’s happening.”

“If you hadn’t come to me, we would have come to take you ourselves.”

“We?”

“Derek and I.”

“You know Derek? He came and gave me a letter. It was addressed to—” Craig held up a hand and nodded.

“I know all about it. Your mom came up with this idea for TF to help out with funerals for workers killed in the fields, but the company had more sinister intentions. In fact, TF is more dangerous than even Dario thought.”

“Dario?”

“He started looking into safety issues at TF. He began something of a resistance and a demand for accountability.”

“I remember he talked about the conditions on the rigs,” Jyra said.

“They’re terrible, but criticizing TF is not a simple undertaking,” Craig said. “Especially with the information Dario found out. TF has been slashing safety budgets and cutting back on standards for oil platforms. They’re taking advantage of the risks associated with pumping oil. No matter how many disasters happen, they can blame it on bad luck.

“What’s even worse, death rates have climbed and TF has inferred a parallel between that and the funeral funding service. They think workers will kill themselves, somehow their families will take the money for the funeral, and use it to leave Tyrorken. That’s why they imposed the conditions. Besides signing up other family members, the other conditions all mandate paying back the money. The funeral funds aren’t gifts, they’re loans unless a family member is committed. Meanwhile, workers are really dying of TF’s oversight and negligence.”

Jyra’s hands shook as she clutched the empty glass. A number of her suspicions were confirmed. She felt the anger rise as it had when she read the letter.

“Did TF kill Dario on purpose?”

“We don’t know yet,” Craig said. He bent down and touched her Mourning Mark. “I want to find out, but Derek is the only one who can do that.”

“Why didn’t he just give me a lift back here when he gave me the letter?”

“I don’t think you understand just how radical TF is becoming,” Craig said. “He is under strict orders to deliver those letters. We have tried to keep our resistance efforts secret, but we think TF suspects him. If he doesn’t show up here soon, we’re going to leave without him.” Craig walked back toward his bedroom and returned wearing a pair of torn and greasy trousers. He dropped his boots in front of the couch and pulled a shirt over his head.

“We’re going to leave?” Jyra asked.

“Yes,” Craig said.

“What about the resistance?”

“There’s not much we can do if TF sends us into the tunnels of the oil mines. Workers down there have the highest death rate of all. We can’t win this fight here.”

“Where are we going then?” Craig finished tying his boots and disappeared into his room again. He dragged his own duffel bag into view.

“We’re leaving Tyrorken as soon as possible.” Jyra set the glass on the floor and stood up.

“How’re we doing that?”

“We’ve got a small ship lined up that can get us to a couple planets nearby. So far, TF doesn’t regulate any spacecraft besides their own. We have reason to believe that might change soon.”

Jyra gripped the back of the chair, thoughts tumbling over each other in her head, trying to receive her full attention. She was torn about her parents who had betrayed her, but were now at the mercy of a global corporation. Dario had been working to expose Tyrorken Fuels and Jyra realized she would pick up where he left off. Someone knocked on the door.

Craig pulled it open and smiled. Derek stepped into the living room and nodded at Jyra.

“Are we leaving?” she asked.

“If you both are ready,” Derek said, looking out the door over his shoulder. “We need to be fast. I wrote in the work log that I’d be doing a patrol sweep. Hopefully that’ll delay them until we’re in the air.”

Craig switched off the light, shouldered his duffel, and Derek took Jyra’s bag. The three of them climbed onto the patrol skiff and glided up the road. Derek navigated through the streets, steering away from the glow of streetlamps. After thirty minutes, he parked in a narrow alley and shut the skiff down.

They all took their bags and walked toward Jed’s Garage. Craig unlocked the gate that led into the repair yard while Derek kept an eye out on the street. Jyra watched a ship flying overhead. Derek tapped her and she followed Craig into the familiar repair yard. Near the back fence, Jyra saw a small ship about half the size of the office building for the garage. Many of the spare engines and parts that littered the repair yard had been cleared back to give the ship enough space to take off.

Two large cables ran from the garage to the ship. Jyra walked next to them and stopped behind Craig, who typed a code on a keypad set into the hull of the ship. The door squealed and opened upward, revealing a small cockpit with a pilot’s seat and two in the passenger area. Craig climbed inside and initiated take off procedures. Jyra pushed his duffel behind the two seats, threw hers on top of it, and stepped outside again.

Derek crouched near the rear of the ship loosening the clamp that held one of the cables in its socket.

“Charging cables,” he whispered. “This ship can’t produce its primary energy boost, but these should have done the trick.” Jyra worked on the other cable clamp. Craig leaned out of the door.

“Ready?”

“Yeah,” Derek murmured. Jyra climbed into ship and began strapping into the seat near the door. Craig returned to the pilot’s chair. Jyra looked up and saw a green valve near the ceiling. It was the air supply and Craig saw her looking at it.

“Go ahead and turn it,” he said. She did and found herself breathing the purest air she’d ever experienced.

Derek picked up his duffel from the ground and prepared to board. The crack of a gunshot cut over the increasing volume of the ship as its singular engine roared to life. Jyra didn’t even realize what happened until Derek fell to the ground, dropping his duffel and clutching his leg. She tried to grab him, but couldn’t reach because the safety harness held her back.

“Go now!” Derek bellowed as five men ran across the repair yard.

“Red button!” Craig yelled at Jyra as a bullet slammed into the hull of the ship. “Close the door!”

Jyra smashed the button with her fist, tears blurring her vision as the door closed over the sight of Derek bleeding on the sand. Out of the small porthole, Jyra watched the men drag him away.

“Hang on,” Craig said. Jyra braced herself and the ship roared even louder, lurched forward, and shot toward the clouds. She watched the lights from buildings become pinpricks across the blackness of the earth below. She was lightheaded, dizzy, and felt an exhilaration coursing through her. A thick blanket of pollution swirled outside the porthole and the city was no longer visible. Jyra realized the temperature was rising steadily, and suddenly the sound of rushing air disappeared. The engine cut out and Craig turned around, removing his safety straps and bowing his head.

“We’ll get him back,” he said. Jyra’s lip trembled but she sniffed once and nodded. She unclipped her harness and leaned sideways, staring out through the cockpit at the sight she longed to see.

Craig turned and looked, too. He switched on the gravity drive and double-checked the temperature gauges. Jyra walked over to the console and stared at the familiar controls she had seen from her book.

“We’ll make it to Drometica for sure,” Craig said. “Derek knew what he was doing, picking this ship.” They both fell silent for a long time, staring past the controls and the gauges, thinking about Derek.

Jyra returned to her seat and pulled her duffel bag around in front of her. She extracted “Ships of the Kaosaam System” and perched it on her knees. Opening to the title page, she pulled out the photo of her brother and read the message he’d scribbled beneath the author’s name.

To my favorite sister, I hope you like this book. Everyone always says follow your dreams but wouldn't it be cool if you could do that with a spaceship? Enjoy your birthday!

Love,

Dario