I turned and saw Sithandra sitting on the floor inside one of Alvin's cool green globe shields. She appeared nonchalant and unconcerned, as though she had something more important to do and was simply waiting for this to be over. I remembered that she had been excited about some new book she got after our last mission and practically lived inside of it up until this one. I was willing to bet she was there now, in the world of whatever the hell it was about.
In the here and now, our targets were getting away thanks to our delay with that grenade launching Reptilian, and the stolen civilian space vessel we were aboard had less than five minutes before it became a giant purple mushroom cloud floating in deep space. Yet, I couldn't blame her. Collecting high-risk, high payout bounties for most of your life will do that to you. Hell, I was feeling pretty nonchalant myself. We'd dealt with worse odds in the past.
My headache cleared up and the dizziness faded mere seconds after I entered cool, refreshing energy rays inside the globe shield. The electric yellow bar in the top left corner of my HUD denoting my vital signs and suit's armor integrity slowly refilled from three quarters to full. Sithandra lazily extended her arm and I helped her up.
"How much time is left?" she asked.
"Two minutes, forty seconds."
"Shit, we're cutting it kind of close."
"Yeah, but when don't we?" I asked honestly. "Besides, we're on our way out of here after this."
Sithandra tenderly shifted weight from her left to her right foot, almost cautious, like someone attempting to grab a precious stone from a blazing fire with their bare hand. She cursed.
"Ah! Damn. Stupid Tronkan fucked up my leg."
"At least you still got your wings," I offered.
"Yeah, lucky me," she said.
She had the polarity on her normally hard pink helmet visor turned down, so it was clear enough for me to see her sharp, spritish features.
After staring off for a few moments, she shook her head and made a tsssssk sound, then looked at me and asked, "Can you believe Volryn back there? The hell was he thinking?"
It was my turn to stare off for a moment as I recalled my friend's valiant final moments in the hangar bay. I instinctively reached back and lightly touched the handle of his Reptilian warsword.
"He saved my ass," I said as the images flipped through my mind like a slideshow.
Sithandra, way more down to earth than I was at that moment, replied, "He saved all of our asses. Those Gruvoldians were gonna kill everyone."
Just then, Alvin stepped into the globe. Sithandra turned the polarity on her helmet visor back up to reflective pink. Alvin tapped a few keys on the touchscreen device attached to his wrist and the globe shield collapsed.
"C'mon. Time to go," he said.