Chapter 50
FIFTY
Bri
Ishouldn’t be disappointed Tai didn’t join me in the shower, but I am. I shamelessly got naked and tried my best seductive pose under the water. I ran my hands down the sides of my body. And the guy left without a second look.
How does he know I’m safe in here? I could have been attacked by a giant sand worm or taken hostage by some creepy alien. Apparently, all he cares about is getting off this planet and subsequently away from me.
I should be focused on it as well, but there will be something bittersweet about leaving this place.
It’s been a crazy adventure from start to finish.
And Tai and I have… Well, I don’t exactly know what has happened between us, but I’m not particularly fond of the idea of going back to how things were before.
I shake out my dress as best as I can before putting it back on and heading out to find him. Across the way, I hear banging around and cursing.
“You okay out there?” I call out to him.
“Yep. Everything’s great!” he calls back, which is followed by a grunt and a crash.
I follow the sounds. Tai’s occasional curse and clang guide me to a small building in perfect condition.
Tai’s long legs stick out from under some machinery. I spot the unmistakable hologram projector over the flat control panel.
“A comms system?! Holy fuck!”
This machine hasn’t been used in decades, but this old, reliable tech could be the miracle we have been looking for!
I marvel at the serendipity of it all. My brothers rescued an old system like this from a garbage pile.
We spent months getting it working again.
We even got a brief signal out to the moon colony before the thing shorted out.
Tai tosses the old motherboard to the side. It lands in a pile of electrical components.
“Just a few adjustments, and we should be back in business,” he says. Another piece goes flying across the room.
“Here, let me help,” I offer and join him under the unit.
“I got this.”
“Do you even know what you’re doing? This tech was used on Earth more recently than j’Tilak. Let me take a look.” I lie on my back next to him, taking inventory of what we’ve got to work with.
A thick layer of sand is caked onto hundreds of differently colored cables. Broken wires hang limply around Tai’s hands while he works to loosen another part.
“I said, I got this,” he says and yanks hard on the green circuit board. It snaps in half with a crack. The tiny noise reverberates through me, dousing my hope for a speedy rescue.
A neat trickle of sand pours from the broken piece right onto his face. The only visible movement is the slow clench of his jaw. He lets go, seeming to accept the sand as his punishment for breaking the only piece of tech that could save us.
“Fuck,” Tai mutters.
I grind my teeth together, trying to hold back the string of insults I want to hit him with. “I hope you’ve got a soldering iron in your pack, because that’s what it would take to get this thing working again.”
I’m proud of my restraint. He hasn’t even flinched. The sand is still all over his face. His chest is the only thing moving, heaving up and down, from him trying to hold back a reaction.
I get up and dust myself off while he lies there and feels sorry for himself. I kick his boots.
“Get up. There’s got to be a backup here somewhere.” I open and close all the cabinets to find the same thing in each one. Absolutely nothing.
With a growl, Tai pulls himself up off the ground and stalks toward the door.
“I need a minute,” he says before leaving me alone with the broken unit.
I’m not in the mood to console him. It’s his own damn fault. If he had let me help him, we could have disassembled the thing together. I jump up and sit on the counter, my legs swinging beneath me.
It’s quiet in here without him. I hate the silence.