Clay sat in the cockpit of his fighter, waiting for the Purple Cloud to drop out of jump space. He was impatient to get going. The day before he’d been nursing the mother of all hangovers, now he was itching to be flying again.
Not that he was over Leo’s death. Far from it. The bottle of whiskey had helped numb the pain for a while, but it wasn’t the answer. It didn’t matter that he’d done the right thing, that he’d do the same again. However he looked at it he was responsible for what happened to Leo.
He’d spent the previous day feeling trapped. All he wanted to do was get out into the silence of space, to see the velvety darkness, to feel his fighter responding to every twitch of his hand. Maybe then he could start to come to terms with what had happened.
Sitting in the cockpi
