Sky Blue Sky

Every bone in your body was aching. Your eyes were closed, but you didn’t need to see to know that you were in pretty bad shape. You could breathe, albeit painfully, but at least you had that going for you. You couldn’t even muster the strength to try and move.

Your brain was thoroughly and absolutely rattled, and it took a moment for you to even recall the events of the past hour.

There was… an argument? Yeah. Yeah, you were arguing with the pilot. Yelling at each other over… emergency procedures. Warnings were going off in the cockpit left and right, it was hard to think.

There was a malfunction and you had been caught up in the orbit of some no-name backwater-ass planet. It was deteriorating fast, you were on a collision course with it… the pilot, Evan is his name, was pulling breakers, trying to regain control of the ship from the faulty autopilot, but that… that dumbass was pulling all the wrong breakers! That's why we were arguing.

He was trying to disable the autopilot and the idiot insisted he knew what he was doing. He ended up disabling the hydraulics for the flight controls…

You groan. Hey, at least you still could still make noise.

You crank open your eyes. The world is a blurry mess and you can't focus.

You bring a gloved hand up to your face and drag it over your eyes before pausing to try and focus on your fingers.

Blood. Not a lot, but more than you’d like to see.

You pull off your gloves and feel around your head. Your vision is starting to come back, along with your hearing.

The mangled wreckage of the ship's cockpit slowly fades into focus. Displays are cracked, shattered and dislodged from the instrument panels. Some are still clinging to life, showing various warnings and messages. Both the captains and first officer seats are, amazingly, still intact, if sitting a little bit crooked on their adjustment rails. The cockpit glass is shattered completely, and a pale yellow fine sand has poured its way inside.

“Engine overheat! Hull breach! Check gear!” Blared the prerecorded warnings of the ship’s computer. You’re surprised there’s still power.

You look over yourself to see if you have all your limbs. Two arms, hands, legs, all attached and where they should be. You can even wiggle your toes.

You scan your surroundings. No sign of the pilot.

Either the fucker got sent straight through the windshield when we hit the dirt, or he’s alive and he left your ass to die in here.

You hope it's the former, for his sake. Because you’ve got a bone to pick with that arrogant prick.

You attempt to stand, and your aching body pops and cracks in protest. Jesus, you’re sore.

But you manage to do it. One leg seems to be in worse shape than the other because it hurts when you put weight on it.

You limp out of the cockpit and realize that the whole ship is slightly askew.

The cargo hold behind the cockpit is in complete disarray; crates, boxes, packaging, and all sorts of logistics material is scattered all over the interior, but most of it is piled up towards the front from the impact.

To your right is an open emergency exit door. Sand is pooling at the entrance and footpaw prints lead outwards.

That motherfucker.

You step into the blazing sun of this unknown world, your boots sinking slightly into the soft, dry sand.

It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to your new environment, but once they do, the sight makes your stomach drop.

Desert, as far as the eye can see. No landforms, rocks, mountains, anything. Just rolling dunes in every direction.

As you turn around, taking in the dreadful sight, you settle on a lone object, standing about a few yards away from your ship.

His spotted yellow fur almost caused you to scan right over him, but the ripped and torn navy-blue flight suit gave him away.

As soon as your eyes settled on him, you felt your chest constrict and your jaw clench.

This goddamn fucking idiot crashed us into this godforsaken planet, lightyears away from any help, and now we’re going to die out here.

You start limping towards him. But after a few feet, you break into a shambling jog.

It's hard to move through these dunes. The terrain is uneven and getting proper footing is a pain with all of this fine sand, but you didn’t give a shit right now.

All you wanted to do was wrap your hands around his skinny little neck and wring the life out of him.

Once you got close enough for him to notice you, you could see the little triangular shaped ears utop is his head rotate in your direction, as if you had just stepped into radar range.

He turns his head. You could now see the little spots and stripes all over his fuzzy yellow face more clearly.

His long fuzzy tail straightened, and he froze at the sight of you.

“You stupid fuck!” You call out to him. “You absolute moron!”

He turns his whole body towards you and drops whatever device he had in his hands. He starts to back away from you slowly, but stumbles and falls on his butt.

Your leg is killing you, but your anger is keeping you going. It wasn’t long before you reached him.

He looks so defenseless as you stand over him, casting a shadow that engulfed his entire body.

You look down at him. He looks so pathetic. You always hated this arrogant little prick. He may be short, oh but he didn’t let that reflect his ego at all.

He's typical pilot trash, through and through. Thinks he knows it all, always arguing with you over the dumbest shit, always trying to prove you wrong, never thinks he’s wrong about anything, thinks he’s better than you!

“What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Know-it-all!? Huh!?” You yell down at him.

He doesn't say anything, he just looks up at you in shock, eyes wide and ears folded flat.

“You crash the fucking ship, bail, and leave me to die in the wreckage, is that it!?”

He still doesn’t say anything.

You’re so pissed at this point, you're practically seeing red.

You put two legs on either side of him and reach down, grabbing him by the collar.

He’s very light, and you’re able to drag him off the ground very easily. Easy to keep that girlish figure when all he does is sit on his ass all day, it seems.

“You never fucking listen to me, Evan, and this is what happens! You strand us on a fucking remote planet, thousands of lightyears away from civilization!” You yell into his face. “You’ve fucking killed us, you arrogant cat! We’re going to die here!”

You’ve started shaking him violently with all the remaining strength in your body. All while he just stares at you, mortified.

You abruptly throw him back down onto the sand below, and he hits the ground with a flat thud.

“What do you have to say for yourself!?”

Your throat is getting sore from all this yelling.

He just continues to say nothing. God, this is pissing you off.

“For once in your goddamn life, you have nothing to say? No smartass comment about how it wasn’t your fault? No ignorant explanation how it was actually somehow MY fault? Nothing!?”

Still nothing.

You just stare at him for a long time.

“I’ve always hated you, Evan. I always knew you were going to get us killed one day,” you say plainly.

You see tears start to well up in his eyes.

You've never seen him cry before. You didn't peg him as the type. He was always too proud to cry.

But whatever, he deserves this. You turn around and walk away.

“I’m sorry!” You hear him yell from behind you.

His apology makes you stop in your tracks. Never once, in your entire career as his flight engineer, have you EVER heard him apologize.

“I… I swear I knew what I was doing! I-I…” he stutters, trying to find the right words.

Of course he doesn’t know how to form a real apology. He’s probably never said one in his entire life.

You don't turn around to face him.

“Anon, there must’ve been a problem with the flight controls, too, I-I don’t know why-“ he tries to explain.

Yeah. The problem was that he TURNED THEM OFF.

But you didn’t feel like arguing with him anymore. That's not how you want to spend your final days.

“Fuck you, Evan,” You say plainly.

You start walking back to the ship. Maybe if you activate the emergency locator transmitter, someone will find your corpse within the next decade or two.

Part 2

Evan didn’t say anything as you walked back to the ship. You didn't want him to.

As the rage slowly started to dissipate, you became increasingly aware of the pain you were in. Your pace went from a walk back to a limp, and pretty soon you were drawing a line in the sand behind you by dragging your foot.

You looked over your ship. It was a complete mess. Looks like it had skidded across the dunes for a few miles before finally coming to rest here, if the giant chunks missing from the sandy waves behind it were anything to go off of.

All six aerodynamic surfaces were ripped off and scattered various distances from the ship: both wings, both upper and lower vertical stabilizers, and both horizontal stabilizers. It looked like an arrow that had its fletching stripped.

Well, a giant, bulky, door-wedge shaped arrow.

Its large, centrally mounted engine embedded in the rear of the empennage was still there, though. Hard to get rid of that thing unless the whole back end of the ship was torn off… which, you suppose, could’ve happened.

Other than that, the ship was halfway buried in the sand. Its belly cargo hold was completely underground and only about, maybe, the upper half of the ship was above the sand.

Smoke was pouring out from the engine exhaust, and you could smell the sweet sickly aroma of unburnt starship fuel in the air.

You're sure the fuel tanks are leaking. Most of it was in the stabilizers, anyways….

The heat of this desert was starting to get to you, and so you were happy to get back into the shade of the ship.

You drag yourself into the cockpit and sit down in your chair.

On the overhead panel, the first thing you do is shut off the fuel pumps to keep the ship from pumping what’s left of your fuel into the sand, if they still respond to your input.

You depress the button with a click and, sure enough, you hear their faint whine die out from below you. That's probably the last time they'll ever run.

You sigh and take a moment to gather your thoughts.

You scan over the panel and see what your status is.

APU isn’t running. Of course that little shit didnt turn it on during an emergency descent. Probably thought we didn’t need it.

None of the hydraulic pumps are on, of course, because he pulled the breakers for them.

Air conditioning fault because the system is probably in pieces right now.

…And that’s about it. Everything else is just living off of battery power right now.

Until you come up with a gameplan, you decide to just shut everything down to save power.

After flipping some switches and pressing some buttons, every light in the cockpit goes dark and the cockpit voices abruptly fall silent.

Now the only light in the entire ship was the hot desert sun bleeding over the sand that's pouring in through the cockpit's shattered windshields.

Fuck, you need some painkillers.

You raise your bruised and battered body out of the chair and reach for the first aid kit mounted on the wall at the back of the cockpit.

You pull it into your lap and undo the zipper.

You’ve never had to use one of these things before, but you were pretty familiar with it considering you had to do inventory of the fuckin’ thing every three months.

You pulled out some bandages for the nasty cut on your forehead and some liquid medicine for your pain.

After dressing your wounds, you scan the overhead panel for the section with the ELT.

You find it and lift up the guarded switch, switching the device to “ACTIVE”.

…Nothing happens.

“No fuckin’ way…” you mumble to yourself.

Usually, a little green light turns on letting you know that it’s activated. But even if it didn’t activate properly, a separate red light would illuminate if there was a fault.

No lights illuminated.

Now, you’re pretty sure that this thing can turn on regardless of if the ship is powered or not, considering that the unit has its own internal battery. Otherwise, what would be the point of an emergency beacon, right? But just to make sure, you flip on the battery master switch again.

The ship springs to life, and you can hear various clicks and beeps, as well as a few fuses blowing, as it runs through its startup tests.

But still no ELT lights.

You look at one of the cracked, but still functional, display panels and use the controls in the center console to switch the display to the “faults” page.

In big red letters, among other things, it lists ELT.

You turn the ship back off.

Your emergency beacon is damaged… and it won’t activate.

You've NEVER seen that thing go bad. EVER. It's like the one thing on this ship that never breaks.

You slowly lean back in your chair and laugh a slow, crazy laugh.

You really ARE gonna die on this planet.

You bury your face in your hands. What did you do to deserve this?

…Actually, let's not seriously answer that question.

You exhale and think.

Ok, what else could you try in this situation?

Before you could finish the thought, you hear the sounds of sifting sand just outside the ship.

The ship's torn and mangled hull creaks under the weight of Evan’s footsteps as he climbs back into the cockpit.

You turn to face him with a scowl.

He meets your gaze and says nothing.

He plops himself back into the captain's chair and looks over the damaged cockpit before turning his attention to the overhead panel.

“Why isn’t the ELT on?” He asks.

“It's busted,” you say. “Must have been damaged in the crash.”

One of his fuzzy ears flicks around as he thinks.

“It’s because you don’t have the battery master on, look…”

He flips on the switch as you place a hand over your face in frustration.

Of course, nothing happens when he presses the ELT switch. He rocks the switch back and forth a few times before giving up.

“Oh, we need to have the engine running for it to work…” he says.

You turn to face him with the most deadpan look you could muster.

“Evan. Why would the engine need to be running for us to activate the emergency beacon?” You start off the question in a normal tone of voice, but the absurdity of his statement manages to get the better of you. “What does the engine have to do with emergency systems!?”

“Stop yelling at me, Anon! I don't see YOU trying to do anything to help!” He yells back.

“I just tried that, Evan,” you say.

“Shit…” he mutters. “Well, someone will find us eventually. They'll see that we haven’t checked in for our flight plan and come looking for us.”

You roll your eyes. “You’re delusional. It's going to take them weeks to even get here, and that's if they start looking for us immediately, which they won't. We’ll starve to death before they even get halfway here.”

He furrows his brow in frustration and looks over the center console, fiddling with the radio frequency tuner.

“We’ll just have to call for help the old fashioned way, then…” he says as he sets up the radio.

Unfortunately, the radio display has the words “INOP” on the screen in the transmit and receive sections, but Evan doesn’t seem to notice or care. He attempts to broadcast a message regardless.

You sigh and sit back in your seat.

“It’s not gonna work, dude. We probably ripped the antennas clean off the ship when we hit the dirt. And even if we didn’t, the receiving antenna is on the belly, we’d have to dig it out of the sand if we want to hear anyone,” you explain.

Evan tosses his radio microphone on the floor in anger, the little curly wire cord keeping it tethered to the console.

“Well then what do we do, Anon?!” He yells. “Fuck, I don’t want to die out here!”

You scoff. “Maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t fucked us by messing with shit you dont understand,” you say with a mocking voice.

“Fuck you, Anon, why are you always such an asshole?!”

“Me? An asshole? That’s rich coming from you, Evan.”

“What?! How am I an asshole? I’m not the one grabbing his coworkers, throwing them around, and yelling in their faces!”

“It's been a long time coming, you arrogant little shit.”

“Is that how you feel about me, Anon?! You think I’m arrogant?”

“Yeah, it is, and I regret not telling it to your face sooner.”

He looks across from you with a look that could only be described as a mix of anger, confusion, and… a little bit of pain.

“Maybe I wouldn’t seem so arrogant if you weren’t always making me feel like I suck at my job…” he says under his breath.

“Excuse me?” You say with a raised eyebrow.

“You heard me! You always talk down to me in ways that make it seem like I’m a complete idiot! Like I don’t know what I’m doing!”

“Well, considering our ship is face down in the dirt right now, I’d say that you don't.”

You can tell that he’s getting frustrated at this point. He’s sitting forward in his chair, swiveled to face you, and his tail is flailing violently behind him.

“Fuck! You!” He screams. “Maybe I’d argue with you less if you actually treated me like your coworker and not like some ignorant child!”

He violently pushes the yoke out of his way, which just springs back and hits him on the ass as he storms out of the cockpit.

…

You rest your head on your hand and nonchalantly gaze around the broken cockpit.

You’ve worked with Evan for about three years now. He joined when he was just out of pilot school at 20, a lot younger than most other new pilots.

And of course, because he was fresh out of school, he always made it a point to show everyone how much he knew. He would correct you over the most insignificant technicalities, especially whenever you found yourselves in the presence of management.

He was looking to prove himself. Guess you couldn’t fault him for that.

But it got to the point where, despite being the older and “more mature” of the two, it actually started to get under your skin.

Soon enough, the two of you were caught up in a game of trying to prove who knows more. He always had you beat when it came to the actual piloting side of the trade, but you could always count on knowing more about the ship than him. After all, you’ve been working on these old things as a mechanic for five years and as a flight engineer for three.

As you look around this mangled wreckage of a ship, you realize now that none of that shit really matters any more.

…

Whatever. Even though you’ve pretty much resigned to accepting your slow and agonizing death, you’ve never been one to sit around and wait for something to happen. Plus, it's starting to get pretty hot in here, and you’d rather not sit around in a pool of your own sweat if you could avoid it.

With battery power on, you quickly take inventory of what systems are still online.

Not much, you find as you scroll through the status pages.

You’ve got about a third of the ships total fuel capacity still stored in the belly tank, considering the other two thirds of it got ripped off with the wings.

That's actually not bad. If you can get the APU running, that fuel could last you a couple of days when switched to air-breathing mode.

And maybe, just maybe, you could even get air conditioning from one of the PAC units.

It's a long shot, but let's see.

You turn on the belly pump to the APU while closing the other valves to the wings, keeping the fuel contained in the belly.

Amazingly, the pump turns on again.

You arm the APU in air-breathing mode, but you notice that the air inlet door isn’t opening. Or, the computer isn’t displaying that it's open. Better go take a look.

The inlet door is on the top of the ship, right in front of what was once the vertical stabilizer.

As you leave the ship, you look around for Evan, who had walked a few yards away from the ship and was sitting on top of one of the dunes, staring into the distance.

You stop for a moment and watch him. He seems to be lost in thought.

…Maybe you should apologize to him. At least, apologize for throwing him around like a ragdoll…

Later. You’re in the middle of something right now.

Anyways, you take a step back from the ship to try and get a good look at the top.

You don't see no open door.

You head back inside and sift through the mess of cargo in the back, looking for the crowbar that’s usually stashed back here for the ground crew. Luckily, you find it underneath a pile of fallen crates and head back outside.

You climb up the skewed side of the ship and on top of the rear empennage. You jam the forked end of the crowbar in between the gap of the door and the hull and pry upwards.

With a little bit of force, you were able to dislodge whatever was obstructing the little door. The motor was able to take over and continue opening the door the rest of the way.

Back in the cockpit, you press the “APU START” button overhead and watch the digital gauge appear on the broken screen.

The EGT gauge started to move, and you could hear the APU whine outside the ship.

There was a loud POOF and a spike in the exhaust gas temps, but it quickly stabilized.

To your amazement, the APU activated and stayed on.

“Holy shit,” you say with a halfway grin.

Lets see if you can press your luck even further.

You push some buttons on the overhead panel, and switch to the air conditioning status page.

It took a minute, but you watched as not one, but both of the PACs came to life and started blowing cool air into the cockpit.

You couldn’t help but laugh.

Well, if you're gonna starve to death, you might as well do it in comfort.

With that all sorted out, you should probably go check on Evan. You’ve calmed down a bit since the crash and you’re starting to seriously regret your outburst. Yeah, he may be an annoying little asshole, but he doesn’t deserve this.

You also think about what he said earlier, about you making him feel like an idiot all the time.

The thought sits heavy in your mind.

Just as you were trying to parse that thought, as you came out through the emergency exit door, you see Evan run down the dune and back over to the ship.

“What are you doing?!” He yells. “You’re going to pump out all of the fuel by running the APU like that!”

There he goes again, talking nonsense.

But, considering the circumstances, you decide to… not bully the fuck out of him.

You take a deep breath and decide to explain things as calmly as possible.

“Don’t worry,” you say. “I’ve closed the transfer valves and only have the belly pump running. The only place the fuel can go is to the APU.”

He looks at you for a moment before saying anything. You look at his deep violet eyes, tinged with a hint of red, and notice that he had been crying.

“Oh,” is all he manages to say.

You stand there, staring at each other in silence for a moment.

“I uh, also got the air conditioning running. If you, you know… want to come back inside,” you say.

He doesn't say anything and just walks past you, back into the ship. You follow behind him.

He doesn't return to the cockpit. Instead, he takes a seat utop one of the many scattered crates in the cargo area.

You lean against the wall and look at the floor. Neither of you say anything.

Cmon, Anon. Apologize. It's not like you’ll get the chance to later.

“Hey, Evan…” you squeak out.

He looks over to you with a blank, tired expression. His ears twitch randomly.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you the way I did. Or shake you. Or throw you around. That was fucked up of me.”

He continues to stare at you for a moment before looking away. He doesn’t respond.

There’s an awkward silence in the room, but Evan eventually speaks up.

“Did you really mean what you said, Anon? That you hate me?” He says in a low, pained voice.

Now that the adrenaline from the crash has subsided, and you’ve more or less accepted your fate, you have the clarity of mind to truly answer that question.

“No, I don't hate you. Not really. I mean, you’ve been a pain in my ass for the past three years but… I don’t think you deserve to be hated,” you admit.

He gazes off into the corner of the cargo hold, staring at nothing. His ears flick and twitch in response to a form of stimuli that your human ears can’t detect.

“I didn't know I was such a burden,” he says solumnley.

You scoff and shrug. “I wouldn't say it like that, it's just… you don't have to be such a stuck up know-it-all all the time.”

“But… that’s what I’m supposed to be. I’m the captain. I’m supposed to know everything about my job, inside and out,” he says. You can see his brow furrow from the side.

“Pffft, nobody knows EVERYTHING, my guy. And anybody who says they do is a goddamn liar,” you say, crossing your arms.

He lets out a groan in frustration and turns slightly in your direction.

“Do you know how hard it is to become a pilot for this corporation, Anon? I started this career before I had even finished high school, when I was 16. My parents enrolled me in the company’s “young leadership” program. Every weekend I was flying for my planet’s air patrol, just to get my hours in. Once I graduated, my parents sent me straight to flight academy and that's all I did, every waking hour of my life, was prepare for this job.”

He started to look increasingly more frustrated as he explained his life story.

“Study, fly, study, fly, study, fly. That’s all I did, Anon, for years! And it paid off! I landed this job right after flight academy. Who else can say the same? Not many other pilots, I’ll tell you that!”

He hops off of his crate and starts pacing around the cargo bay, kicking various small pieces of discarded cargo out of the way as he walks.

“So yeah, I DO know everything, Anon! I had to know everything, because otherwise I wouldn't have landed this job, and I wouldn’t have made my parents proud!”

He kicks something over in your direction, but it goes wide and sails past you, out the emergency exit door.

He turns to face you, his ears folded flat and a sad, contorted expression of pain, regret, and anger.

“So I’m sorry, ok!? I’m sorry I’m such a burden to you! I’m sorry I crashed the ship, and I’m sorry that I turned out to be such a failure!”

You both just look at each other for a moment, and you realize that somewhere during his little tangent, your brow had furrowed into a look of concern.

The two of you never really talked like this before. You always kept things job-related. You only knew the bare minimum of this dude's life, and for the longest time you had thought that the little you knew was enough to cast judgement.

You really felt like an asshole, now.

“Hey…” you say, letting your arms fall to your side. “Evan, look. You don’t need to apologize, I get it. I’m… sorry, too. For not getting to know you, all these years.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, defeated. “None of this matters. We’re dead. I spent all my life preparing for this and it wont even matter.”

You open your mouth to argue, but stop yourself before saying anything. You… actually agree with him for once. Your chances are looking pretty bleak.

You look around the cargo bay. The sun had started to set over the sandy dunes of this desolate desert world, painting the landscape in a deep orange that beautifully complimented the other warm colors of this lonesome expanse.

“Hey, Evan,” you say.

He looks over to you.

“Wanna go watch the sunset?”

His brow scrunches up, confused. But that look quickly melts away once he realizes the point of your request.

“…Sure,” he responds.

Part 3

The sand underneath you was soft and fine. Every once in a while, a gust of dry wind would blow across the dunes, picking up wisps of light sand, blowing them across the earthy waves below.

The two of you sat utop the crest of a large dune, maybe a few yards away from your crashed vessel. The day was coming to an end, and the sun was about halfway below the horizon.

The sky was a mix of color; the oncoming darkness at your back, its pallets of cold blue melded with the warmer oranges and reds of the setting sun at your front.

The heat has begun to die down, and you suspect that it's going to get a lot colder in the next few hours. Luckily the ship will be able to keep you warm.

But for now, it’s actually pretty nice out, and the two of you are enjoying the nice weather.

For a while, the two of you sat in silence, but eventually Evan spoke up.

“Hey, Anon,” he says. “How would you have gone about fixing the autopilot?”

Honestly, you’ve been replaying that scenario over and over in your head ever since you crashed. The answer seemed obvious to you: simply pull the breakers for the autopilot system. Which, in Evan’s defense, is probably what he tried to do.

But you can really only say that now that the adrenaline and fear has subsided. Would you have been able to solve the issue easily with all the sirens and warnings going off, and the threat of crashing looming over your shoulder? Who's to say?

But you remember what Evan said earlier, about treating him like a coworker and not a child.

“Well,” you start off. “The breakers for the autopilot are behind your head, I would’ve pulled those first.”

“But that would’ve disabled the stability systems, making it even harder to manually disengage from the planet,” he says in rebuttal.

“Nah, this is an older ship, the stability augmentation is a separate system that the autopilot shares. You can disable the AP and it won't affect manual controls,” you explain.

He turns his head to you with an expression of disbelief. Normally, this would piss you off, as if he doesn’t believe a word you're saying. But you swallow your pride and treat this as an opportunity to understand Evan a little bit better.

“Then how come I have to enable AP to maintain a steady orientation in space?” He asks

“You’re thinking of the dash 3k freighters. Those are newer, more automated. This dash 1k isn’t as fancy,” you respond.

“No way, it drifts even with stability augmentation enabled?”

“Yeah, it's a common complaint from pilots. You can't really fix it. The whole ship just kind of sucks. Maybe that’s why they integrated it with the autopilot in later models,” you say with a shrug.

Evan looks back towards the sunset with a frown.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” You ask.

He glances at you for a moment. “It’s just hard to believe. I’ve never heard of a ship work like that.”

You suppress the urge to make a smart ass comment about how many ships he's ACTUALLY flown in his career. You want to try and make a friend in the last moments of your life, not spend it fighting.

Instead, you decide to show him something.

You stand up and brush the sand off of your navy-blue cargo pants and tell Evan to sit tight, you’ll be right back.

You head back into the ship and grab your PDA from the back pocket of your FE chair. It looks like it survived the impact.

You power it on and walk back to Evan. On the way, you swipe through the interface to see if you could connect to the galactic network at all.

No network relays in range. Of course.

But you didn’t need a network connection to show Evan the thousands and thousands of pages worth of ship maintenance manuals you had downloaded during your career as a mechanic.

You plop down next to him on the dune and position the PDA to where he could see it.

He looks down curiously.

“Ever read through the ship's maintenance manual?” You ask him.

He looks up to you and rolls his eyes.

“Of course not,” he says. “I don’t have access to those.”

You grin and say “well, maybe if you got on my good side then I would’ve shared them with you.”

Evan rolls his eyes again, but you could barely make out the slight curve of a smile tug at the edges of his lips.

You tap around on the PDA until you pull up the description and operation of the system the two of you had just been talking about.

“Here, read that,” you say, handing the PDA to him.

“The stability augmentation system,” he reads aloud, “is a hydromechanical system controlled by three computational units to provide the pilot with precise control over the ship’s three axis of movement in both atmospheric and non-atmospheric conditions. The system is self-contained and can be disabled by the pilot during manual maneuvering, or separated from the autopilot should a malfunction occur…”

After reading that last part, you just look at him with a shit-eating grin, waiting to see his reaction.

“What the fuck?” He says in disbelief. “I wish I had access to this kind of documentation earlier! Why didn’t you tell me more about this?”

…Seriously? Every time you tried to explain something to him, he-

Deep breaths, Anon. Don’t let him get on your nerves. Friend, you're trying to make a friend here.

You shrug, trying to think of a non-confrontational response.

“Like I said before, I’m sorry. I should have approached you in a less… argumentative fashion,” you say.

At first, you thought you had said that just to keep the two of you from getting into another screaming match. But honestly, you’re starting to think that maybe you should’ve practiced more restraint in the past.

He doesn’t answer for a minute, and just continues to tap around on the PDA.

“Navigating these manuals is a real pain…” he says. He then turns to look at you, and for once he’s not wearing a look of anger or frustration. “Do… you think you could show me how to get to the interesting parts?”

Your smug grin evaporated for a second, and you were unsure of the emotion that started to well up in your chest.

Evan is looking at you with a soft, curious expression, as if he’s genuinely curious about something you have to show him.

Looking back at him, for a moment you forget about the egotistical young pilot you’ve spent the last three years with, and instead see, well… just Evan.

“Yeah, sure,” you say, scooting closer to him.

The two of you are basically shoulder to shoulder as you look down at your PDA. Evan doesn't seem to mind.

For the better part of the next hour, you and Evan scroll through this digital manual, reading dry and boring technical information. Information that you’ve read a thousand times before. Your pilot, however, seems completely enthralled by this little PDA. He combs through diagrams, exploded views, schematics, and all sorts of documentation pertaining to the wrecked ship behind you. Whenever he had a question, you would pipe up and give him some anecdotal accounts of your experience with that particular part or system.

And the best part about all of this is that he actually listened. Not only that, but you guys managed to have some fun conversations about a common interest.

You would tell him stories of your time as a low man, when you first joined the company, getting stuck with fixing the lavatory, or how in the summers back on earth, when it was really humid out, you had to suck the accumulated moisture out of the A/C ducts with a vacuum cleaner because the PACs were so shitty at separating water from the air.

And in return, the little ocelot would give you his own stories in return. He wasn’t in the business as long as you, but he had plenty to say about his time in flight school. He told you about the shitty training aircraft he had to use, and how they were donated to his school as tax write offs.

He was currently caught up in a story right now, actually, about his first intersystem flight.

“…They made us fly those things all the way to the 9th planet in our system, Galvana, and back. It was miserable, dude! The controls on that hunk of junk were stiff and it took the engines half an hour at max thrust just to make a course correction,” he says.

You nudge him in the shoulder.

“So, you should be an expert on handling these things,” you tease, throwing a thumb over your shoulder at the wreckage behind you. “These things are all cable-driven too; no FADEC here!”

He actually smiles for once at your comment, and you watch as his tail playfully swipes the sand behind him.

He actually has a very nice smile. You take note of the way it pushes up the edges of his cheeks and exposes a set of pearly white, sharp teeth, all while making cute little scrunches along the edges of his snout.

You’re starting to regret not treating this little guy better all these years.

The thought makes your stomach sink, and your demeanor quickly changes.

A change that he notices. His smile also diminishes as he looks away.

“…Yeah. All these memories are nice and all,” he says, “but I guess none of that really matters now, huh,” he says as he turns solemnly back towards the horizon, where the sun has long since set and only a faint pink glow remains in its place.

“It's… actually not really about that. Well, it is in a way, because it fucking sucks that we’re probably gonna die out here, and I’m not gonna lie to you and say that I’m not scared shitless, but…”

All during your runaway tangent, he just looks at you, silently.

“…Anyways, I just… I’m sorry. Genuinely. I know I’ve said it already, Evan, but I regret not getting to know you more and letting my prejudice get the better of me. You’re a really cool guy.”

You glance over to him and hope he accepts your apology.

Come to find that he actually has a warm smile on his face.

“Anon, can I admit something to you? Since we’re probably not going to make it off this rock," he asks.

“Sure, dude, go for it,” you say, giving him your full attention.

“I uh,” he says as he rubs the back of his neck, “I always kind of looked up to you. It's… part of the reason why I was always so defensive. I just wanted to impress you…”

He nervously avoids eye contact.

“I didn't want you to think I was inexperienced or stupid or anything.”

“Damn, you’re shitting me, right?” You ask, bewildered.

“It’s stupid, I know,” he says, crossing his arms and deflating his posture a bit. “But-“

“No, no, you’re good. I’m just surprised, is all,” you say, cutting him off.

“Is that weird?” He asks, looking over to you.

“Well… kinda? Why would you look up to me? I’m not even a pilot. I'm just some grease monkey.”

He sits up slightly and his ears raise a bit.

“Yeah but you have so much experience and knowledge and confidence! It's… what I wanted to be. What I wish I could be…”

You… never really considered yourself any of those things. I mean, experienced, sure, but 90% of that knowledge came from years worth of fuckups and mistakes.

“I don't know,” you say. “I dont think I'm worth looking up to.”

“I think you are,” he says with that same warm smile from earlier.

You feel your stomach drop again. You hate that this dude still thinks that of you, all things considered.

“You can't possibly mean that. Even after everything I've said to you?” You ask.

He shrugs. “Well, you were a huge dickhead earlier, but…”

He looks over to you but quickly adverts his eyes.

“Maybe you could make it up to me, somehow?” He says, seemingly unsure of his own question.

Well, under normal circumstances you would probably treat him to a few drinks at the bar, or maybe a fancy lunch, but, considering your current predicament, you don't think either of those things are on the table.

“Uh, yeah dude, I don't know what I can do to make your slow death more enjoyable but I can sure try my best!” You joke.

“Well, there’s something I’ve always wanted to try, but I never got the chance…” he says, nonchalantly.

…

“Huh?!”

The two of you were back in the cargo hold of your wrecked ship, and Evan was once again sitting atop another large crate.

His tail was swishing playfully back and forth and he was kicking his legs off the side of the crate.

Meanwhile, you were just standing there, flabbergasted at his request.

“I won't force you if you don’t want to do it, Anon, but I never really got to explore that side of me back in flight school…” he says nervously.

The “it” that he was referring to, of course, being sex.

You were taken aback. Never in a million years did you ever expect to hear that question come out of his mouth. If someone had told you that Evan wanted to have sex with you, you would’ve laughed in their face.

But here you two are, alone, and, unless this was some sort of heat-induced hallucination, he definitely just asked if you wanted to fuck.

After staring at him, wide eyed, you stammer out an answer.

“Are you sure, Evan? I mean, it’s not like I think you’re unattractive or anything, you’re actually pretty cute, but-“

He cuts you off and he looks at you mischievously.

“You think I’m cute?” He asks with a blush that betrays his confidence.

“Uh, well, I mean,” you say, finding it difficult to not trip over your own words.

“I just think that, ya know, if we’re gonna die anyways then maybe you could help me cross some things off my bucket list?” He asks with a nervous grin.

You're completely shocked, although you can't really say why. He’s not entirely wrong. If this is it, then why not have some fun before your inevitable demise.

Plus, you owe him this much. You want to make things up to him.

“…Well, alright,” you shrug. “Fuck it, sure.”

His eyes go wide and he hops off the crate.

“Really?! Damn, I didn’t think you’d actually say yes,” he says.

“Well, I did,” you respond. “So uh… now what?”

“I don't know, I’ve never done this before, you tell me…”

“You’ve never had sex before?” You ask with a raised eyebrow.

“Nope. I was always too busy for that kind of stuff.”

“Not even a blowjob?”

“Nope.”

“Handjob?”

“Unless you count my own, nah.”

“…Kiss?”

“Well, this one girl “dated” me back in grade school and she kissed me on the cheek once…”

You can't help but let out a chuckle.

“Hey! Why don’t you come over here and teach me then, Mr. Experience,” he says defensively.

“Alright, looks like I have to,” you say dismissively. “Can’t work with an inexperienced coworker, after all.”

You close the gap between you two, and for the first time you actually get a decent idea of just how much shorter he is from you.

It's not by THAT much, maybe a few inches, but you have to crane your neck slightly to get at eye level with him.

With your faces only a few inches away from each other, Evan just stands in front of you, awkwardly, seemingly not sure of what to do with his hands.

“…You can touch me, if you want,” you say in a low voice.

“Oh, right…” he says, swallowing nervously.

He places two tentative handpaws on your midsection, just above your waist. You do the same to him, but you pull him into an embrace, pressing the two of you together.

He looks up at you, his eyes wide. You can feel him shiver nervously under your touch and practically hear the beating of his rapid heart.

You go in for the kill, deftly pressing your lips to his.

It was awkward at first, but he’s a quick learner, and soon he manages to find a good position for his snout against your face.

His lips are soft, supple, and vaguely sweet. You press him further into you with each pass of your lips, and he practically melts into your arms.

After a few seconds, Evan starts to get more confident, and curiously probes your lips with his tongue. You take this as a sign to escalate further, and you quickly meet his tongue with yours.

He lets out a cute moan as the two of you wrestle with your mouths, and he even starts pressing himself further into your body.

After a while, though, you start to run low on air and you break the kiss, much to his dismay.

He separates with a huff, and a thin string of saliva still connects the two of you together at the lips.

He wipes his mouth, and looks at you with half lidded eyes and a sly grin.

“How was that?” He asks.

You suppress the urge to tease him and instead opt to shower him in praise. To make things up to him, of course.

“That was great, Evan, you did such a good job for your first kiss,” you say, running a hand through his short, fluffy hair. You trace your fingers around the base of his big, spotted ears, which elicits a very cute and content sigh from the cat boy. He closes his eyes and rests his head on your chest.

He seems to really like the praise… which gives you an idea.

“So…” you say playfully, “what do you think? Want to take this further?”

He raises his head from your chest and lets out an eager, “yes!”

Gottem.

“Alright,” you say with a smug smile, “then I'll let you take over, Captain…”

You remove yourself from his embrace and circle back around to the large crate he had been sitting on earlier. Before you hop up, you undo your belt and drop your pants, all while keeping eye contact with Evan.

His eyes dart around nervously and he can’t seem to settle on one thing to look at. All the while he keeps his handpaws over his growing erection.

Once you properly ditch your ragged cargo pants, you hop up on the box in only your underwear. Well, your undies and your equally as torn button up shirt.

“Show me how much of a good boy you are and take the lead, Cap’n,” you say teasingly, presenting your crotch.

Evan was desperately trying to hold together some semblance of a confident demeanor, but it was quickly becoming completely unraveled.

He cautiously stepped forward and positioned his head between your legs, admiring your substantial bulge.

“I uh, I’ve never really…” he squeaks out.

“You’re a smart dude, I’m sure you’ve studied this topic before,” you say, cutting him off. “You’ll figure it out.”

He quickly glances up to you before focusing back on your crotch.

“Ok, here I go…” he says, lowering his snout onto your bulge.

The wetness of his nose brought with it a cool sensation that sent shivers down your spine. Pretty soon, his whole snout was tracing circles around your junk as he took in your scent. Occasionally, he would look up at you with half-lidded eyes, seemingly drunk on the scent of your crotch.

As cute as this whole display was, it was definitely taking you from half-chub to full hardon pretty quickly.

He notices this and stops his admiration, looking up to you for further directions.

“Well, you’re probably gonna have to take these off, Cap’n,” you tease, pushing your thumbs underneath your waistband and snapping them against your skin.

Without saying a word, he quickly brings his handpaws over your waistband and hungrily yanks them down your legs and tosses them aside, revealing your bare cock.

You never really considered yourself a monster in terms of size, but you were certainly nothing to laugh about. And Evan seemed to agree, because he seemed to be in awe as your cock sprang free of your undies and slapped him softly on the snout.

“Holy shit…” he says under his breath, eyes fixated on your throbbing member. “Are all humans this big?!”

“You flatter me, Cap’n,” you say with a smile.

He takes your cock into his handpaws and starts exploring every single inch of you, all while gawking at your size. He rests his head on your thigh as he slowly strokes you up and down with one hand and massaging your balls with the other.

If he had started off with this technique then you would have never assumed he was a virgin.

“Damn, where’d you learn to do this?” You asks between heavy breaths.

He tears his gaze away from your girth for just a moment to answer.

“Saw it online,” he says plainly. “Why? Does it feel good?”

“Yeah, really good. You’re doing a great job,” you say.

All while he still strokes you, he brings his head up your thigh and looks you in the eyes with that same drunk look from earlier.

“Say that again,” he demands.

“What? That you’re doing a good job?”

He frowns a bit. “Not like that, Anon, say it nicer…”

Ohhhhh, you get it. You bring a hand down to his face and give him a tender rub under his chin.

“You’re doing amazing, Evan, you’re such a good boy,” you coo.

He lets out a satisfied moan before dropping his face back down to your crotch and positioning it right at the end of your cock.

Before you even have a chance to react, he takes the head of your aching member into his mouth and continues to pump your length with his free hand.

The feeling of his mouth was absolutely divine. He worked with the enthusiasm of someone who's definitely watched a LOT of porn, but yet has never actually had a real dick in his mouth before in his life.

His work was sloppy, but somehow that made it feel even better. It was like he was trying his damnedest to force the cum right of your balls, whether he properly knew how to or not.

Pretty soon you had begun to buck your hips, trying to force his mouth full with as much of your cock as he could manage. To your surprise, he made it about three quarters the way down your length before bottoming out in the back of his throat, leaving both of his hands free to play with your balls.

But just as you were about to blow, he backed off and released your dick with a wet pop.

“Are you close?” He asked, wiping the spit from his mouth.

“Y-Yeah,” you stammer out. “Why'd you stop?”

“You’re not cumming in my mouth,” he says with a frown.

Damn. That's pretty disappointing. But before you say anything else, he pushes you off the crate and you stumble onto your feet. He bends over the crate and presents his ass to you, grabs one of the holes in his tattered clothes, and rips it open.

The sight was beautiful; he looked back at you with an expecting smile, all while displaying his raised tail and shapely spotted bare ass through his torn clothes.

All that time he spent in that captain's chair really did wonders for his lower body. It seems like all of the fat in his short lithe body went straight to his cheeks. Bent over like this, his rear end absolutely eclipses the rest of his body.

“Uh, Evan, are you sure? Shouldn't you, like, warm up for this?” You say.

He rolls his eyes. “Just because I haven’t seen any action doesn’t mean I can’t practice. Just use your spit, I can handle it.”

Well, how could you say no to an invitation like that?

“Alright, but if it gets to be too much-“

“Just shut the fuck up and ruin my ass,” he interrupts.

This cocky little asshole. Well if that's what he wants then that’s what he’s gonna get.

You grab the base of his fluffy tail and pull it slightly upwards, preparing as much spit as you could produce before dropping a long string of saliva down onto his cute puckered hole.

It hits its mark dead on, and you feel him shudder under your grasp.

You prod his hole with the tip of your cock and lean over his back.

“Alright, Evan, I’m gonna-“ but before you could even finish, you feel him force himself back towards your hips and impale himself on your cock.

Evan lets out a primal groan and you gasp in surprise.

Amazingly, he backed himself down all the way to the base of your cock! His soft, supply butt landed on your pelvis with a soft ‘poof’ as his velvety fur made contact with your skin.

“Fuck meeeeee,” he whined.

Without giving it a second thought, you began working your hips, slowly at first, to savor the glorious feeling of your captain’s tight asshole. But that didn’t last long, because Evan decided that you were going fast enough and began bouncing on your cock himself.

Fine, if rough is what he wants then that’s what he’ll get.

You bend forward and place one hand on his hip and the other on the back of his head, pushing his face into the surface of the crate, and begin to absolutely demolish his ass.

You bring your hips out, almost to the point of freeing your cock, before slamming back down as hard as you can.

He was right, he must’ve been practicing A LOT, because the soft inner walls of his ass easily gave way to your onslaught.

As you keep slamming this short cat into this crate, you peek over to the side to get a better look at his face.

His eyes have practically rolled back in his head and his mouth is wide open, letting his tongue drape over his jaw and swing around with every plap.

“Yeeeees, Anon, give it to meee,” he slurs as you continue to ravage his bussy. “Am I doing good? Does my ass feel good?”

You press yourself deep inside him, hitting your cock in his bussy, and press yourself against his back so you could get as close to his ear as possible.

“God, Evan, your ass is perfect, YOU’RE perfect,” you coo into his ear in a low, sultry voice. “I’ve never had ass this good before in my life…”

He manages to push himself upwards and off your cock and flip over, spreading his legs and revealing his own swollen, throbbing cock through another tear in his pants.

He lifts up his legs and wraps them around your waist before pulling you close.

“Breed me, Anon! Tell me how amazing I am!” He exclaims.

You waste no time shoving your cock back into his ass, only this time you get a front row seat to watch his face as you pump inside of him.

He keeps his eyes locked on yours, and pretty soon you get lost in those beautifully violet eyes of his. You press your forehead to his and continue to thrust away, inching ever closer to your impending orgasm.

“Evan, I-“

Before you could say anything more, he cuts you off with a deep, passionate kiss.

You can’t hold back any more, and you give one final thrust before unleashing a torrent of cum inside of his tight asshole.

He must be coming too, because with every pump of your seed, you’re met with erratic clenches that only serve to further milk you of your seed.

He moans into your mouth, and you could feel the vibrations of his satisfaction reverberate throughout your body.

You don't know how long you had spent pumping him full of cum, but after what seemed like an eternity, you pull out of this kiss, leaving Evan limp and exhausted on top of this crate. You look down to find that he had indeed cum as well, painting what was left of his shredded jumpsuit with his own seed.

You pull your spent cock from his asshole and it dislodges itself with a wet plop, followed by a small waterfall of cum.

Exhausted, you sit on the floor and rest your back against the crate.

The two of you take a moment to recuperate before Evan eventually hops off of the crate and takes a seat in your lap.

He reclines back onto your chest, resting his head under your chin, and grabs onto your arms to wrap them around his midsection.

He nestles in before letting out a deep, content sigh.

“Apology accepted, Anon,” he says.

Part 4

You wake up the next morning with an extremely sore back, and upon opening your eyes it's immediately apparent as to why. You had fallen asleep sitting upright against a large cargo crate. The memories of the previous night slowly come back into focus, and offer an explanation as to why Evan was also nuzzling into your chest with his arms wrapped around your upper body. And also why you’re not wearing pants.

He looks very peaceful, softly snoozing away without a care in the world.

You find yourself conflicted.

Yeah, last night was some of the best sex you’ve had in a long, long time, but… did it mean anything? Were the two of you just using the fact of your impending doom as an excuse to let loose? Would you have done that if your circumstances were different?

Hell, would the two of you even be friends if this whole crash hadn’t happened?

These were questions you don't think you had the time nor energy to answer truthfully. The reality was that the crash was real, and so was your night with Evan.

And right now, you think that you’re just going to enjoy his company for what it is in the moment.

You wrap your arms around the Ocelot and rest your cheek on top of his fluffy head. His large, fuzzy ears part slightly, as if on autopilot while he sleeps, so you could nuzzle him comfortably.

After a while of cuddling, you start to become increasingly aware of how thirsty and hungry you are.

You've got some snacks and soda stashed away in the pilots’ cargo compartment behind the cockpit, but obviously soda alone isn’t really something you’d want to rely on when stranded in a desert.

But soda is like, what, 90% water, right? Better than nothing, you suppose.

You wiggle your way out of Evan’s embrace and he flops to the cargo bay floor with a soft pap.

This was enough to wake him up, because he opens his eyes in a groggy haze while looking around, confused.

You make your way to your snack stash, which really only contains a few cans of generic brand soda, and maybe three bags worth of plain chips.

You grab a pair for each of you and return to Evan. You sit back down on the floor next to him, your sore back screaming in protest, and place his share of rations in front of him.

He pulls himself into a sitting position and looks down at your offering.

“…What’s this?” He asks.

“Some rations,” you say as you tear open your bag and pop the tab on your soda. “You know, to extend our suffering for another day or two.”

He takes his chips and soda and scans over the two items.

“I don't like grape soda…” he says, frowning at the can.

Before you take a sip of your own soda, you pause and look at him in disbelief.

“We’re stranded in a desert, with basically no food or water, no help, and you're being picky about soda?” You ask.

He looks at you, dead seriousness written on his face. “I want your soda, Anon. I’ll trade you.”

“You’re a real brat, you know that?”

“Who cares? We’re dead anyways. I don't want to spend my last days drinking shitty grape soda,” he says.

You can’t help but laugh. He smiles as well.

“Plus, you owe me for my amazing performance last night,” he coos.

“Alright, alright, here,” you say, offering your can in exchange.

You swap soda and he immediately starts taking swigs from the drink, seemingly forcing down at least half the can.

You eye him as you take mere sips from yours, attempting to draw out this can as long as possible.

“What?” He asks, noticing your stare. “I’m here for a good time, not a long time.”

“I didn't peg you as the type of guy to give up so easily,” you say.

He just shrugs in response, and looks down at his soda that he has cradled with both of his handpaws.

“I did a lot of thinking last night, Anon, and, well… I’m still really scared, but also, I don't know. It feels nice to not have expectations anymore,” he explains, rotating his drink in his hands.

You open your bag of chips and start munching away. Despite the chips being overly salty, pretty bland, and even slightly stale somehow, you feel… appreciative of them, for some weird reason. All the while, you just listen to Evan talk.

“Doing that with you last night was really nice and all, but I don't know if I would’ve asked that of you if we weren’t in this situation…”

Well that kind of stung. But knowing what you know now about him, it doesn't sound like he regrets it. It seems like he’s got a lot of inner conflict that he needs to sort out.

So instead of letting his comment get the better of you, you decide to see if you can get him to open up a bit.

“Would you have become a pilot if it weren’t for your parents?” You ask between crunches.

“I don't know. It was something I had spent so long preparing for that it's hard to remember the things I liked before they got me into it…”

He takes a sip from his drink and looks out of the open emergency exit door. It’s still dark out, but you can faintly see the purplish glow of a rising alien sun over the horizon.

“…I used to be really into reading and writing,” he continues, “when I was really young. But I remember my mom getting upset at me whenever she saw me reading instead of doing my homework.”

You gulp down what remains of the chips by pouring the small pieces and crumbs into your mouth, all while giving Evan your undivided attention.

“Hey, Evan,” you say. “If we somehow made it out of this whole situation alive, what would you do?”

He turns his gaze from outside back towards you and scrunches his brow in thought.

“Probably keep flying, honestly. The company would just treat this whole thing as an unpaid vacation anyways,” he says with a slight laugh.

You offer a smile as well.

“Right, but like… fuck your parents, dude. You're a grown adult, you can do whatever you want with your life. If this isn’t something you want to do, then you deserve to find something that makes you happy,” you say.

“But, this career is more important,” he responds with a pause. “And I like doing stuff I’m good at, Anon. It's the only thing about me that people actually care about…”

His ears fold flat against his head and he averts his eyes.

“Important to who, your parents or you? Plus, cmon, that's not true! You’re an interesting guy,” you say, trying your best to reassure him.

He looks at you with a stern face and locks his eyes onto yours.

“You’re just saying that because I gave you tail, Anon. We’ve known each other for three years now, and all we’ve done during those years is fight,” he says with conviction. “If we somehow get out of this mess, things will just go back to the way they were.”

“I think you’re just being dramatic. We don't have to go back to being enemies, you know. We can be…”

“What? Friends? A couple? C’mon, Anon, get real,” he spits out, his ears folded back. He had set his drink down and was crossing his arms, but for some reason it looked as if he was hugging himself. “All of this between you and me would’ve never happened if we had never crashed.”

You want to argue with him and tell him how stupid he’s being right now, but that would just prove his point, wouldn't it? No, you have to approach this differently. You've been extremely regretful of your actions up to this point, and if these truly are your final days then you’ll be damned if you spend them living as if you hadn’t learned anything from all of this.

You strategically choose your next words very carefully.

“Evan… you know you don’t have to live up to any “grand expectations” that people have of you, right? It’s ok to just be yourself…”

He looks away in contemplation.

“I can't just… stop being the person I’ve been for the past 23 years of my life, Anon. What, am I just supposed to give up my life’s work as a pilot to chase some childhood dream?”

“No, no, I’m not saying you need to make any drastic changes or anything but, I don't know dude, maybe try to go a little bit easier on yourself? It’s ok to fail every once in a while. It's ok to say you don’t know, and it’s ok to open yourself up to others…”

He looks back at you with a frown.

“Hard for me to believe that when my earlier fuckup literally cost us our lives,” he says sternly.

“Alright, well sure, but you know what? Yeah, I was pissed at first, but honestly, I’ve enjoyed our time together,” you say satisfactorily as you take another sip from your drink.

He crosses his arms in frustration. “Like I said, you got some tail out of this, that's the only reason you think that.”

“Oh, you think so?”

“Positive.”

“So if we make it out of here alive, you think I’d go right back to hating you?”

“One hundred percent.”

You continue to sip from your soda. “You really think I’m that shallow? That I’d only like you as a hole?”

He scoffs.

“Why else would you keep me around? I’m… hard to like, otherwise…”

“You know, Evan, I’m starting to think that this whole “bratty egotist” thing you have going on is just one big coping mechanism,” you say nonchalantly.

“Are you some sort of psychologist now?” He asks with a raised eyebrow.

“No, just taking a guess,” you say with a shrug. “I think you don’t like yourself.”

He narrows his eyes at you.

“You think that just because we shared one night together that you know me? You don’t know anything about me, Anon.”

You put down your can of soda and give him a sympathetic look.

“Sure, but… I’d like to get to know you more, Evan. And if we make it out of here, I promise that I’ll treat you better.”

He rolls his eyes and chuckles.

“I wish you had treated me better from the start,” he says under his breath.

Ouch. But he’s right, even if he is a little shithead sometimes.

“Well, momma didn’t raise no liar, so I better get to it,” you say casually as you stand up and pick up your mangled and torn cargo pants, as well as your undies.

Evan just looks up at you, confused. “What are you doing?”

You slip your underwear back on and stick one leg through your pants.

“So the radio is busted, right?” You ask.

“Yeah?” He responds. His ear flicks curiously as you fumble around with your clothes.

“You saw the wiring diagram for that system, right? It's got two antennas and some computers. One antenna on the bottom of the ship and one on the top.”

“Ok? And you said that the bottom one is buried underneath the sand, if it’s-“

“Still attached to the ship,” you say, finishing his sentence. “I bet it’s not.”

Evan gives you a look that's somewhere between flabbergasted and dismissive.

“Even if it's not, it could be anywhere! And on top of that, what are you gonna do once you find it?”

“Well if you help me look for it, I’ll tell you,” you tease, sticking your other leg through the empty pant hole and hoisting them up.

“You’re crazy,” he says.

“What? It's not like we have anything better to do. Plus the sun's starting to come up; it’ll make it easier to find. C’mon,” you say, offering Evan a hand.

He looks at your hand for a moment before giving in and accepting your offer. You help him up and the two of you head outside.

…

“So why did you decide to rip your pants open instead of just taking them off last night?” You ask from behind Evan’s ass as the two of you trudge up the side of a large dune.

You two had been combing the area behind the ship for what felt like hours, and had been following the trail of assorted ship parts for about two miles now, at the very least. The sun had risen a decent amount above the horizon and seemed to be planted firmly in the sky overhead. If you had to guess, and guess is all you could really do considering you have no idea how long the day and night cycle of this planet actually is, you had to say it was about mid morning.

So far, the two of you had found one wing, one stabilizer, and the foot of your LH main landing gear.

But no antennas.

Evan had gotten impatient with your search methodology and decided to take the lead, which explains why he’s in front, and slightly above you on an incline, showering your vision with ocelot ass.

“I saw it-“, he huffs as he takes a long step up the incline of this dune, “-in a video once. I thought it would be hot.”

“Well it-,” huff, “-was, but I bet your pants are filled with sand right now.”

“These things are barely pants anymore anyways, the sand probably just goes right through the holes,” he replies as he crests the top of the dune.

“See anything?” You ask from below him.

He doesn’t respond at first, just raising a handpaw to his brow to block the glare of the sun. You watch as his large furry ears rotate and twitch about their position, as if they were little detectors searching for our prize.

“…No. This is pointless, Anon! Why are we even out here?” He whines. “Can't we just wait out our days back in the ship where it’s cool?”

“You’re such a crybaby,” you tease, as you crest the top of the dune with him. “C’mon, put a little effort into your last moments.”

“Uuuuuuuggggh,” he groans dramatically. “This is stupid, I’m going back to the sh-“

Before he could finish his complaint, he trips over something, sending him tumbling down the side of the dune.

You watch as his body rolls like a ragdoll, kicking up dust and sand in a triangular trail behind him, all the way to the bottom.

He finally came to rest on his back, facing completely opposite of the dune. He was covered from head to toe in a dull orange dust.

“Hey!” You call out from above. “You still alive?!”

“This is your fault!” He yells back up at you.

“Yeah, he’s fine…” you say to yourself.

You look at what he tripped over and it seems to be a piece of debris from your spacecraft. You bend over and pull it out of the sand.

It was the shape of a large, elongated triangle that tapered towards its tip. Around the base of it was, what seemed to be, a chunk of a bracket or mounting plate that had been ripped from its fasteners. You knew what this was.

It was the radio receiving antenna.

You dust it off with a satisfied grin and clumsily walk down the side of the dune.

You meet Evan at the bottom, who is busy dusting himself off and shaking the sand out of his fur.

“Hey, buddy!” You call out to him. “Good job finding that antenna!”

You raise the piece of damaged technology up above your head.

He looks at you with wide eyes.

“No fucking way…” he says. “Can you fix it?!”

“Nah, this thing is fucked,” you say plainly. “But I might be able to throw something together with what we have, though.”

…

Back at the ship, Evan was sitting above a hole in the floor of the lower cargo bay in almost pitch darkness. The only light was coming from the PDA in front of him, which was open to the wiring diagram of the ship's communication system.

In the hole below him, was you. You were crawling on your belly in the cramped service tunnel of the avionics bay, which was now full of sand thanks to the massive hull breach. You couldn’t see very well, but you had one of the ship's shitty emergency flashlights with you, giving you at least the suggestion of illumination.

You were sifting through sand, trying to find the hole in the bottom of the hull that this antenna originally occupied.

Eventually though, you find it.

“Evan!” You call out. “Do you have a knife?!”

Your voice echoes throughout the tight service tunnel.

“What?!” He yells back, before sticking his head into the hole. You don't have enough space to look behind you fully, but out of the corner of your eye you can see two big, yellow ears sticking upside down into the access hatch.

“A knife?!”

“…You found a knife?” He asks.

“No! Do you have a knife?”

“Why would I have a knife?!”

“Jesus, dude. Can you go get me the crash axe?”

“Why, are you stuck?” He asks, amusement dripping from his voice.

“Evan, just get me the fucking axe!”

“Say please,” he teases.

“I’m going to kick your ass.”

“That’s a weird way of saying ‘please’.”

“Evan, please.”

“Thank you, Anon.”

A few moments later, he returns with a small, alloy survival axe that has probably spent its entire existence in its mount on the wall behind the captain's chair.

He shoves it to the side of you and you wiggle an arm backwards to grab it, hopefully not by the blade. Not like you could tell, anyways, with how dark it is in here.

You grab the axe and carefully bring it in front of you. Right under your chin was the wiring harness that connected the antenna to the computers at the front of the ship. The wiring harness was stuck to the hull of the ship with plastic bands that kept everything organized. You needed that harness, so you’ll be freeing it from its plastic prison with this axe.

You began slicing away at the bands, popping them off one by one, freeing more of the harness with each cut. Eventually, you got enough slack to pull the frayed end out from underneath the sand where it had once been attached to the antenna.

When you eventually cut enough bands, which had to be no less than 50, you had managed to free the entire harness, which gave you enough slack to drag it out of the service tunnel. The whole harness basically spanned the length of the ship, so with it completely unbound you were hoping you had enough slack to make it up through the main cargo area and out the emergency exit door.

You shimmy your way back out through the hole with the crash axe in one hand and the end of the harness in the other.

Evan scoots back to make room for your exit.

As the two of you make your way back into the light of the upper cargo bay, you take a seat on the floor and bring the frayed end of the harness into your lap and grab the crash axe.

“You pulled the comms breakers, right? G14, 15, 16, and K13, 15, and 16?” You ask

“Yup, they're all pulled.”

“Alright, Evan, I need your help. I’m going to need you to tell me which wire is which,” you instruct him.

He sits down with his legs crossed next to you and taps a few times on the PDA.

For the next hour or so, Evan reads off letters, numbers, and designations while you whittle away at the shielding of the damaged wires with the crash axe. Normally, you would have an actual wire-stripping tool but unfortunately you didn’t bring your tools with you, so you had to make do with this axe.

Which was fucking terrible at stripping wires, by the way. You managed to fuck up at least three times so far, taking the ends off of a wire instead of just exposing it. But luckily, you had room for a few mistakes before you ran out of material to work with.

You do the same with what remained of the wires on the antenna until you had a good set of exposed metal. Now all you had to do was twist all of the stripped wires together with the harness and you should have a working comms system!

Maybe!

Honestly, who knows. This is all working under the assumption that the antenna is the only thing wrong with the system.

But fuck it, its worth a try.

Once you were finished, you stood up and dragged the antenna outside with its harness attached like a spindly umbilical cord and set it in the sand with a clear view of the sky.

“You really think this will work?” Asks Evan from the doorway of the emergency exit.

“Nope,” you say plainly.

You and Evan make your way back to the cockpit and take a seat in your respective chairs.

“I’ll let you do the honors, Cap’n,” you say.

Evan gives you a quick glance before gripping the knob on the comms panel and switching it to the ‘ON’ position.

To your amazement, the LED panel didn’t display the word INOP in place of where the frequency selection would be. Instead, it actually displayed, well… frequencies!

“Well that’s a good sign,” you mutter to yourself.

Evan tunes the radio to a common distress frequency and grabs the microphone, raising it to his mouth and clearing his throat.

“…SOS, this is Star Union freighter one miner three, SOS,” he says.

He waits a second before repeating. The only thing that could be heard in the cabin was the sound of the radio producing some soft static.

You sit in your chair, waiting with bated breath.

“I repeat, Star Union freighter one miner three has crashed landed on planet Beta Three of system Valkyrie Gamma, does anyone copy?”

The both of you look at each other. Still nothing.

“Well, I can record a voice message of our SOS on the PDA and then set it next to mic to broadcast on repeat-“

You were suddenly cut off by the sound of the radio blasting to life.

“Shiiiiiiet, a couple a’ Union boys stranded all tha’ way out here?” Came a heavily accented voice from the damaged speakers around the cockpit. “Well slap mah ass and call me Shirley, I’m on muh way, gentleman. Sit tight and I’ll be there before thuh next cycle!”

The two of you looked at each other in disbelief, mouths hanging open and eyes wide.

You nudge Evan in the shoulder and whisper, “answer him! Let him know where we are!”

Evan fumbles the mic before regaining his composure and responding.

“Uh, holy shit, we thought we were done for!” He says. “Our ship is trashed, we don't know our exact coordinates on the planet, and our beacon is dea-“

The voice cuts him off.

“Don’t worry yer sweet lil’ head, buddy. Lucky for y'all, I’m with the Coalition Survey Team, the sensors on this bad boy can sniff out a ship from a lightyear away!” The man says.

Evan leans back in relief and lets out a deep sigh.

“Alright, sir, we’ll sit tight and wait for your arrival. Star Union, out.”

He looks over to you with a huge smile.

“I can’t believe it,” he says.

You smile back, equally as relieved.

“Looks like I owe you a date,” you say with a wink.