Yesterday's Words #4 - Andromeda's Pledge #1, Mack #6

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The day before yesterday, I wasn't feeling a hundred per cent so I did no words. Yesterday, I wasn't feeling too crash hot, either, but words got done regardless. Days off are okay, but I can't afford too many of them in a row.

Here's what got done:

Words from the Sixth:

Andromeda's Pledge (Chapter 4):

“They do not want the ship to launch.”

Joseph bit back the urged to order Ivan to tell him something he didn’t know. He almost stopped himself rolling his eyes. Ivan caught the expression and the shadow of a smile crossed his face.

Joseph wondered what the man thought was so funny. Whatever it was, it wasn’t funny enough to stop the smile fading and Ivan’s expression growing bleak.

“Your country and my country are at war…with each other as well as SouthPac. If we do not launch we will all be sent home. Not only will we have to live through a war, but this project might never be allowed to happen…and so we are leaving. Now. While we still have the chance.”

“But what about…” Joseph began, and Ivan shook his head.

“Do not worry about what you are seeing outside. They cannot stop us.”

“What about jets?” Joseph asked, and Ivan frowned.

“They have not sent for them, yet,” he replied.

He might have said more, but the engines surged, their power vibrating through ship and pod alike. Ivan waved goodbye and mimed talking later. His image faded, and the view from outside the ship took his place.

If it had been moving fast before, the ship was speeding, now. Buildings blurred and the jeeps closest to the barricade sped away. The ship angled up and the ground fell away.

The jeeps became insignificant ants on a model air base, and the helicopters soon stopped trying to keep up. The ship climbed higher, racing to reach the upper atmosphere and escape the planet’s grip. It took the sky at an angle, as though trying to slowly break free instead of punching its way clear.

Joseph watched the ground grow more distant until the shape of the planet grew clearer. He was still watching as it became a colored globe.

Staring at it, Joseph began to feel a strange kind of sadness, but the screen shifted, again, and he found himself staring at Ivan, instead.

For a moment, Joseph was silent, seeing the same grief he felt mirrored on Ivan’s face. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, “We aren’t going back, are we?”

Ivan sighed. “No, boy, but our children might get to visit.”

Joseph thought back to the jeeps and the soldiers and the helicopters, and he shook his head.

“Maybe our children’s children,” he replied.

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Mack #6 (Chapter 28):

I tracked the distance between where I’d gone and where I was and had to agree. That, and I was getting tired.

Why was I getting tired?

I needed to move the Limelight closer…

A startled No! was as far as Delight got, before I kicked the liner’s navigation system, slapped its drive controls and then…

Sonuvabitch! Mack wasn’t impressed…and neither was Doc.

I vaguely registered, Have you got her? followed by a flurry of movement as Tens intervened to stop the Doc hitting me with an autoinjector as soon as Abby gave her affirmative.

Abby yanked me out of the Limelight’s systems and dragged me back into my own head.

Sit, she ordered,  and don’t touch anything.

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And that's all she wrote...yesterday. Let's see what happens, today.



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