8. Crash, Bang

8 CRASH, BANG

A llie

Ever wondered what the inside of a spaceship looks like? Not the interior. I mean, the stuff between the interior and the outer shell.

Now I know.

It looks like the inside of anything when you smash it open, it looks like nonsense. It looks like spaghetti and odd shaped organs, which might have been that shape to begin with, or maybe not.

I am lying in the wreckage, looking up at the sky. I can't feel my body. I'm not sure if I still have one, or if this is just how it feels when you've passed from one world to the next.

The ship is still somewhat around me, but in the same way a shattered teacup spreads itself across a kitchen floor. I am inside it, but also outside it. The brig has split wide open, and the fuselage is cracked in dozens of places.

"The crash systems work impeccably!"

I hear an excited, cheerful voice.

"Impeccably!" Another ecstatic tone replies.

Cadence and Casey are clambering out of the wreckage with the smugness of technical engineer types who have done a very good job. It might have been quite literally the only job they ever did.

"Come on," they say. "We should try to vacate the ship before it collapses around us."

I follow them over the crushed bits and pieces until we find ourselves sitting on the side of the volcano, looking out over a primordial view that includes the incredible wreckage of the Mare. I feel incredible grief, not to mention, incredible confusion.

"How are we alive?"

"It's foam," Cadence says. "We installed chemical reservoirs in the walls, and when a crash is detected, they break open, mix, and create a brief high-impact shielding around biological life forms. It happens in seconds."

"Seconds?" Casey echoes incredulously. "Nanoseconds. When your ship is ploughing into the side of a volcano, you don't have seconds. Seconds are a luxury." She laughs.

"Microseconds!" Cadence replies. "That's what you've got."

"You don't even have microseconds. A nanosecond is a thousand times less time. It's much smaller. But chemistry happens in even less time than that. Chemistry is fast."

"Chemistry is king," Cadence agrees, finally saying something that Casey doesn't want to immediately argue with.

"So we're all alive? We're all okay?"

"Well, I am, and she is, and you are. That's a pretty good start.

"What about the baby?"

They look at one another.

"Oh, that's right. The baby. The baby was very small. I wonder if the surface area was broad enough to allow the foam to work?" Casey muses.

"I don't know. Babies are relatively very dense," Cadence replies.

"I don't think that is true. Infants and young people have a greater ratio of surface area to size," Casey says.

"That doesn't sound right. They're so lumpy."

"I think it is, lumpy or not. You're right that they are lumpy," Casey throws Cadence a bone.

I sit, stunned, listening to the two of them bicker about the theory of survival when it comes to babies. There's something wrong with them. There's something wrong with all of us. What happened to Wrath? What happened to Lettie?

"Did you install those systems in the bridge, too?"

"Oh yes. Lettie will be fine. She'll still be insane, but her body won't be broken, and that's the only thing we can do anything about," Casey says.

"We're limited in our scope," Cadence explains.

"Very limited," Casey agrees. "For example, I don't have the first idea where we are right now."

"Looks like dense primordial forest on the verge of what I'm hoping is a dormant volcano, because magma flows are the last thing we need right now," Cadence snorts in an oh my god can you imagine sort of way.

"Oh my god, can you imagine?" Casey laughs. "Oh my god. We're sitting here, in the wreckage of our spaceship, which means oh my, we're not going back to space any time soon, are we?"

"Haha, no!" Cadence giggles madly.

"And then, oh… here's a gigaton of molten lava hot enough to melt this whole thing into oblivion."

"It would be like the ship never existed at all!" Cadence shrieks with laughter.

"I know!" Casey joins her in her mirth.

I don't know what's funny about that, but the two of them are absolutely rolling with laughter. It's probably shock. People handle stress in all sorts of different ways.

"We are going to need to try to salvage some survival things," Casey says when they stop laughing. "There's plenty on this ship to help us. This is basically camping."

"Better than camping," Cadence replies. "We're always saying we don't get out enough. Now we're going to be outside all the time."

Bits of the ship start to shift. A panel is pushed up and over. A sense of pure relief floods my body as I see a horn emerging. It's Wrath. He's alive. The foam worked.

As he emerges from the remnants of the ship, I see that he's holding Lettie's body in his arms. She is limp, her head rolled back, no movement of life obvious in her. I feel some part of me break at the sight. This is not how this was supposed to happen. We were supposed to make everything better. I wanted revenge, I suppose, but not like this.

Cadence and Cassie rise to their feet at the sight of him.

"What happened? Did the foam not work?" Cadence asks the question.

"The foam didn't work," Casey says solemnly.

"Oh my god. The foam didn't work."

I don't know if they are more upset at the failure of their mechanical system, or the fact that Lettie is gone. I know what I am most upset by. This was all so unnecessary. This didn't have to end this way. This didn't have to happen at all.

"Mr Saurian! Is she dead?" Casey calls out.

"She's unconscious," Wrath says. "She's still breathing."

"Yes! The foam worked!" Cadence and Casey high-five.

"If you mean that infernal substance that made me absolutely certain I was going to be smothered to death at the precise moment of the crash, yes. It worked," Wrath growls as he lumbers toward them, not to mention me.

"That's exactly what it is supposed to feel like," Casey says. "It's ironic, don't you think?"

"A little too ironic," Cadence replies.

These two are so damn thrilled to be in a disaster it's almost sick.

I rise to my feet to greet him, filled with sudden, ecstatic glee. It's like I finally understand what the engineer girls are so excited about. Cheating death with someone you love is the greatest rush of all time.

"Allie!"

Wrath's eyes are widening at me. He is staring at me as if he is seeing a ghost. For a second, I assume he is just happy to see that I am alive, as I am happy to see him alive. But then I remember…

He forbade me from coming onto the ship with him.

I'm not supposed to be here.

The look that comes across his face in the aftermath of his surprise sends chills through to the very core of me. He looks determined in a way I do not want him to be determined.

Wrath strides across the wreckage, Lettie's body in his arms. He hands her off to the engineers almost without looking, leaving the two of them to take the load of her and lower her down to what passes for the floor in a shattered ship.

I've never really understood the fear of Wrath until this point. Lettie and others talked about him like he was the most terrifying creature on the planet, but he has always been nice to me, soft even. I thought they'd really exaggerated things.

I no longer think that.

Furious Wrath is terrifying.

It is not just his appearance, but the sheer energy emanating from him. He has not said a word, and yet I feel the how dare you disobey me in my bones. I want to run. So I do. Hell, why not. There's not much point having instincts if you don't follow them.

I sprint off away from Wrath, much to the amusement of Cadence and Casey, who hold Lettie and laugh at the top of their lungs. I look over my shoulder to see if the running is working. I feel as though the earth would be shaking if Wrath were giving chase. When I look, I see that he is not chasing me. He's not actually moving at all. He has stopped, and he is looking at me with his arms crossed over his chest.

I stop too, mostly because it suddenly occurs me there is nowhere to run to. We are in the middle of a densely forested area surrounding this volcano and the wreckage of the ship. If I were to actually get away, I'd probably be lost forever, and I don't think I'd survive that.

Once I stop, Wrath starts walking toward me again. I let out a little whimper as he closes the distance between us, still very much with that intimidating energy.

I run again. I can't just stand here and wait for whatever the hell he is going to do to me.

This time I run quite a bit further before stopping.

Wrath has followed, but not at a quick pace. He is just walking after me.

"Don't do this," I beg. "Don't be… don't think… don't…"

He doesn't say a word. I wish he'd say something. I don't remember ever feeling as though I am in this much trouble before. I am quite literally shaking.

This time, I let Wrath reach me, resigning myself to whatever is to come. He grabs me by the arm, picks me up, and strides off up the mountain with me. I don't know what he intends to do to me, but I know that whatever it is he wants privacy to do it. Is that good? I don't know.

He carries me up behind a rocky outcropping not far from the wreckage which provides some kind of shelter from the eyes of the others. There he puts me down, so he can look at me, and so I can look at him as he starts lecturing.

"I told you to stay on the surface," he growls at me. "It was a singular order, and it was very, very clear."

His eyes gleam green, and his voice is deep and resonant… and pissed.

"I couldn't leave you to go up by yourself," I say, trying to explain myself.

"Yes, you could have. If you had, that would have been for the best. You could have been killed!" He says this, swings me around, and slaps my ass hard. The leathery palm of his massive saurian hand feels like being hit with a brutal implement.

I cry out, tears immediately leaping to my eyes.

He props his leg up on a rock, tosses me over his massive tree-trunk thigh, and proceeds to spanks me hard.

"You will do as you are told. There is one rule when it comes to me, and that is Do What I Say." He smacks me with each and every single one of those words, making me cry and sob all the more.

Having been through the trauma of a spaceship crash, and this brutish reunion with the saurian I have been stupid enough to fall in love with, I do not have the emotional fortitude to keep myself together. I cry hard. I cry all the tears I probably should have cried before this moment, tears I choked back years ago.

W rath

This should feel more satisfying. Usually, punishing someone who deserves to be disciplined feels righteous. But I don't like doing this at all. Every time my palm meets her round ass, I feel a pang of regret as I wish that this was not necessary.

She disobeyed me, and she could have damn well died in the process. I spent the last moments before impact thinking that I was dead. I thought I would never see her again, but I was okay with that because I knew she was safe. But she was never safe. She'd followed me like an imprinted baby lizard.

She really, truly deserves to be thrashed.

I pick her up from my knee and put her on her own feet. This isn't going to be properly dealt with like this. All I am doing is getting my own frustration out. I want to do more than that. I want to teach her a proper lesson.

And at the same damn time, I am so happy to see her I can barely stand it. I did not like flying in the ship, and I liked crashing in it even less. The sense of desolation in the moments after the impact was like none other I have experienced.

The truth is, I am happy she is here. Not that she almost got herself killed, but that she cared enough about me to follow me. In a sense, I am punishing her for loyalty. Dammit, this woman manages to make my thoughts twist like crazy.

"You are too important to be wasted on a stupid death like this," I lecture her. I am not going to soften right now. I am going to ensure that she learns a lesson today, even if I'm not entirely sure what lesson I'm trying to teach.

"I just wanted to help you!"

"I don't need your help!" I thunder at her. "I need your obedience."

"Well, you're not going to get it," she sobs, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve. "I'm never going to leave you to just maybe die alone. I don't care how much you beat me. I don't care. I don't care!"

Her defiance is remarkable. She is small and she is weak. She cannot help that. It is how she was made. I could easily beat her into submission if I wanted to. She knows it. Maybe she thinks I am trying to do that.

I haven't even begun to command her submission.

"You better start caring," I warn her.

"Or what? You'll whip me? I don't care. You don't know how often and how badly I've been hurt," she says. "You don't know what happened to me before I was on this stupid planet, or that stupid ship. You think I'm nothing more than a cleaning lady. Well, I'm a cleaning lady and a lot more."

I feel my arousal growing with every word she throws at me.

My anger at seeing her here, and realizing that meant she did not hesitate to disobey me, has begun to break down into its composite parts. Mostly, there is fear for her safety. I have been the alpha of the saurian underworld for a very long time, and though I would say there are those who are loyal to me — none of them followed me aboard the human's ship. She did.

She would give her life for me, and I have given her practically nothing.

Even when punished for her disobedience, she is not ready to abandon me.

I do not know what to do with her. This small, strong, brave little human of mine, who is so disobedient, and so willful.

There is only one thing to do.

I pick her up, and I kiss her.

Deeply. Passionately.

"You are a very bad girl," I growl when the kiss is broken. "A very, very insolent, disobedient little human brat, and your disobedience is going to be punished."

She looks at me with more than a little confusion. "I can't tell if you're mad at me or not."

"I am mad at you," I say, holding her under her sore butt. "I am not pleased with your disobedience. And I am absolutely going to discipline you for it. But I also love you more than I knew I was capable of loving anyone or anything. Remember that when I am punishing you."

I smack her ass her while I am holding her against my body, making her writhe against my cock, which is hard as it has ever been underneath my pants.

Now that the initial shock has worn off, there's something about surviving death that makes me want to fuck her long and hard and fill her up with my seed.

"Ow!" she gasps in my ear, her little sounds of pain making me throb.

I know exactly what to do with her. I know exactly how to teach her a lesson, too. I let her know what I have decided to do with her, every word making her blush more intensely than the word before it.

"You are going to suck my cock, and I am going to fuck your human pussy, and I am going to fuck your ass. There is not a hole of yours that will be spared my cock. You will serve me like an owned thing, because that is what you are — mine."

Allie writhes against me as I keep spanking her, alternately rubbing between her legs, knowing how wet she will be getting beneath this fabric. Her hips jerk back and forth, grinding that little clit of hers against me.

I free my cock and let her feel it. She is wearing a dress, which is the perfect garment for a woman like her, one who does not wear underwear very often. Her skirt has already ridden up out of the way by merit of the way she is squirming against me, and now my cock is pressed against her bare sex.

I have always been careful with her. I want to pull her pussy straight down on my dick. I want to make her cry out in pain. I want her to be sore, and sorry, and I want the very notion of disobeying me to be something she will never, ever consider again.

But I said I was going to make her suck me, and I intend to do that first.

A llie

"On your knees," he growls, putting me in position. The ground is not particularly soft, or yielding, but neither is he. My ass is quite sore from the spanking, but I know he held off on that. He is tempering his anger at me. He is showing me mercy. And he is horny as hell.

He frees his cock for me, lowering his body into a crouch so the thick head of it can find my mouth while I am kneeling in front of him. His hips angle down, and the thick head of it presses between my lips.

I know I was wrong, technically, to disobey him.

But I am so know I was right to come.

So I am not sorry, not one little bit as I wrap my mouth around his huge, scaled cock. I cannot take that much of it inside my mouth, but that does not matter. This act is not about engulfing his cock. It's about showing me how small I am, how much I struggle to take him, and how it would be better if I'd just behave myself.

I hear him groan with pleasure, and I know that the feeling of my hot, wet mouth is satisfying for him even if he can't go very deep. Even like this, it's enough. I am enough.

Wrath treats me like I am the most precious thing on this planet. His focus on me is laser intense. Even now, with his big hand gripping the top of my head, slowly making my mouth bob on the tip of his dick, he is being incredibly careful and measured with every move.

The adrenaline of the crash is still charging through us both. We know we are lucky to be alive. I know I am aroused as hell. I want him to forgive me, and I want him to fuck me. I want to feel close to him. I want our bond to be forged again.

"You can be so good sometimes," he praises me. "Look how hungry for my cock you are. Can't fit it all in your mouth, but you savor it like a treat. Do you want it in your pussy, Allie? Do you want me to fill your tight cunt?"

He speaks in these deep, resonant, near gentlemanly tones, but the things he is saying are absolute filth.

"Yes, please," I say, my words equally polite, but my intention equally filthy.

He lets out a pleased snarl and picks me up again. I love how easily he can handle me, truly as if I weigh nothing at all to him.

W rath

That little interlude in her mouth only served to heighten my need for her. I was already hard before she started suckling on my cock, but now I need to fill that other hole of hers, that breeding one.

"You are going to take my seed today," I tell her. "I am going to breed you as I should have been breeding you from the beginning. You are going to bear my babies, Allie. Do you understand?"

Her eyes are sparkling, her cheeks flushed. She bites her lower lip nervously, but I can smell her arousal and it is only intensifying.

"If you want to give your life to me, I will take every part of you," I tell her as I maneuver her into place. That skirt of hers rucks up over her hips very nicely, leaving the feeling of her soft inner thighs wrapping around my waist.

I love this woman. I found her intriguing the first time I met her, and that feeling has only deepened into admiration and adoration as I have learned more about her. She is a survivor. She is a fighter. But she wants to be soft. She wants to be protected. And that is what I intend to do, for as long as we both live.

"You were a bad girl," I growl, lifting her up, and impaling her on my cock. "But I know how to make you a very good girl."

She is soaked. I slide directly into her all the way as deep as I have ever been able to go. The feeling of her inner walls gripping me tightly is like no other. I feel her pulsing and flexing around me, her molten heat making my cock feel as though it has slid home.

"Look how wet you are," I purr. "Do you like being punished? Do you like it when I growl and lecture you?"

"No!" She whimpers, her body confirming what her lips are denying. I saw the excitement in her eyes when I had to catch her. I saw the moment she realized that she had been a very bad girl and she was in some serious trouble. She was afraid - as she should have been, but she was excited, too.

"I'm so sorry. I never wanted to be bad. I just always get wet when you touch me," she whimpers against my neck, gyrating her hips so her cunt grips my cock even more.

She knows exactly what to say at exactly the right time, I will give her that.

I lean back against the rock that shields us from prying eyes, and I fuck her like my personal toy. I use her body in long strokes, filling her up as much as she can take, then pulling all the way out again. I make her stretch for my cock time and time again. I make her tight human hole relax for me and take me the way I want to take it.

"I hope you don't think you are going to orgasm," I tell her. I am going to breed you, and you are not going to come at all. Bad little girl."

Calling her a bad little girl almost sends her over the edge. I feel her shudder against me, her inner walls gripping tighter. I am going to have to fill her up quickly, ensure her bare pussy is full of my seed.

"You're going to swell for me," I growl in her ear. "You're going to be full of my baby, and there's nothing you can do about that now. I am going to release my breeding fluid inside you."

With those words, I clamp her ass down on my cock and I come inside her, filling her all the way to the brim with my most potent come. I feel her writhing against me. She wants to come, but she's not going to. I hold her back and away from my body a little, keeping my cock inside her, but stopping her from getting pressure on that hungry clit of hers.

She is beautiful, looking flushed and well fucked, absolutely desperate for release. But she does not deserve to come. Not yet.

I hear footsteps coming over the rocky ground, and human voices with them. The two humans from the ship have come to find us. Perfect timing, really. I pull Allie off my cock, enjoying the way I briefly see my seed sliding down her inner thighs before I put her down, letting gravity restore her modesty.

"Uhmmm.., what's his name?"

One human hisses the question to the other.

"Mr Angry?"

"That's… no. That's not it."

They come to some kind of silent understanding apparently, before one raises her voice.

"Uh? Mr Horn? Are you in charge of saurians? Because one is climbing out of the wreckage, and I don't know if we are supposed to stop him or not."

"Also, Lettie's waking up and I don't know if she's going to run away or try to kill us all again. I assume that's what happened."

The other two humans finish one another's sentences. They seem like they are going to be difficult to handle — though I wonder how they would fare if they were to be separated. I am already starting to think about how to allocate these human resources. If they were assigned to separate mates, it would be interesting to see if they still had quite the same level of glee in every single impudent sentence.

They are lucky I just came. My mood is markedly improved, and my patience extended. Of course, I have not forgotten the facts of this particular matter, nor the direness of the situation in which we all now find ourselves.

The human Lettie has very nearly killed me, and Shan has proven completely incompetent when it comes to stopping her. I thought he would be more equal to the task. Interesting how these little things somehow manage to get away with everything.

Allie is standing in front of me, squirming and flushed. I am sure she is absolutely annoyed to be interrupted by the others. She looks rather pretty in this half-fucked state, her tender pussy dripping my seed, all those arousal hormones still producing pheromones.

"Time to deal with this," I tell her, patting her ass over her dress. Her little whimper is very satisfying to hear.

"Come with me," I say. "I don't want you out of my sight again."

She follows me dutifully, like a little pet, all the way back to the wreckage.

The two humans who came for my help see me emerge and rush back in front. It is rather like having a small human swarm as an escort as we get back to the downed ship.

There's a crunching sound, a sound like something trying to be born from the wreckage. I can see broken panels trying to move under the force of something beneath them, but they are heavy.

I know it's Shan, and for a moment, I am tempted to leave him. Then I hear the same thing everyone else hears - the babbling of an infant. Stepping carefully back into the wreckage, I help pull them up and off the pocket in which he and his child must have survived.

Black-eyed and dusty, Shan emerges from beneath shattered panels. The baby is in his arms, waving its own limbs and making exhortations of various incoherent kinds.

I am struck by how adorable it is. The existence of this baby is proof of concept. Humans and saurians can mate, and produce round faced, sweet little children with cute scales.

My plan, at one stage, was to breed all the humans and create a new sub-species that would undermine the machinations of our society. Anything disruptive has to be good, or so I thought at the time. Now I am beginning to question the wisdom of my actions - and not because the baby isn't perfect, but because I am starting to believe that humans are absolutely uncontrollable. It is madness to imagine that their offspring would be any easier to handle. The baby already looks like trouble, if I am to be honest.

"Shan!"

Lettie, who has indeed regained consciousness, unfortunately for us all, runs to Shan. She throws her arms around him and the baby, apparently forgetting she was the one who locked him away, and she was the one who crashed the ship and damn near killed her entire bloodline in the process.

He wraps his free arm around her and pulls her up against his body, kissing her with surprising forgiveness. It is concerning, the way saurian males seem to be so willing to tolerate the madness of their human women. I hope I am never such a pushover - and I hope Allie never behaves so recklessly.

"You do realize she is the reason we are in this situation," I growl. "That human woman is a criminal, a murderess, and she just finished nearly killing us all. Sweet kisses aren't what she deserves. A public whipping would be more appropriate."

The little family regards me with various levels of interest or lack thereof. The baby stuffs its fist into its mouth, while its mother makes a much ruder gesture at me.

"Lettie is the mother of my child," Shan says, his dark eyes giving nothing away. I know for a fact he is not typically capable of loyalty, but perhaps he has bonded with the insane human in a way he never did to anybody else.

"What's the matter, Wrath?' Lettie taunts me. "Don't like finding yourself abandoned in the middle of nowhere? Well too bad!Now you're stuck here with us. They're not going to find us."

Lettie laughs at me, pulling away from Shan so she can better put her entire body into giving me attitude. "How do you like that? A taste of your own medicine? You stranded me once, and now you're stranded too. Ha!"

The woman's smugness crosses deep into unhinged territory. I know she is not well, but there is something about what a terrible person she is being that makes me not care very much about that.

She has, however, forgotten that I am not the only wrongdoer here. And she has forgotten she is not the only human woman with a temper and a capacity for violence.

Allie comes flying through the air, almost as efficiently as if she had wings, and tackles Lettie into the wreckage. Bits of hull bend and warp beneath their bodies as Allie grips Lettie by the lapels of her suit and slams her down against the ship's exterior.

"You sent me down to the planet in a fucking g-string to be fucked whether I wanted it or not," she yells. "You're a psycho, and you've crashed the Mare. You've taken our chances of escape and ruined them. You've made it so we'll never be able to be free ever again. I hate you!"

"Get the hell off me, you psychotic!"

Lettie's argument is not as strong as Allie's, that much is certain.

Shan hands the baby to the blonde women and wades into the fray to retrieve his mate. I do the same, though truth be told I would happily let Allie beat Lettie for as long as she liked.

For a brief moment, he and I are eye to eye. He is a traitor, and he knows it. His wife is a madwoman, and we all know it.

"This baby seems chill," one of the women says, bouncing it on her hip.

The baby may indeed be chill for now, but with parents like these, I doubt the creature has much hope at all. I hoist my mate up under my arm, carrying her like a sack of any vegetable you might care to name.

"There is no point in fighting. We need to set up shelter," I say as Allie glowers at Lettie, who is now hiding behind Shan. "We are exposed. We need to take what we can from the ship, and make shelter as nearby as possible. It's likely search parties will come."

"They're not coming! We're hundreds of thousands of miles away! We probably did a half-orbit of the planet before we crashed! Besides, why do you think they're going to come for us? Us crashing and never coming back solves all their problems," Lettie snarks at me from behind Shan's shoulder. "It leaves Grave City to Thorn, it means all the humans there will remain forever under control, and it gets rid of all the troublemakers, including our half-bred baby. Why would they rescue any of us?"

"She has a point," Allie mutters, from her undignified captive position in my arms.

"Thorn is not the only one with influence," I remind them all.

"Oh right. Your evil guys will come and do evil things. Great," Lettie rolls her eyes. "We're saved."

"Get your woman's tongue under control, Shan," I warn him. "She is going to face severe consequences for what she's done. You have to know that. She fired on the city itself. What do you think Avel will do to her once he finds her?"

I don't think he's thought about any of this. I think he has been struggling to keep his baby alive and I think he is out of his depth with his mate.

"You should have taken her off the planet while you had a ship to do it. Now you are stuck here with a half-mad mate, a baby, and a series of consequences. You have got to start taking responsibility, Shan."

Shan's expression is one of guilt and regret. I gave him the chance to escape the consequences of his actions. He allowed his woman to rule him, and that is a mistake that no male of any species can ever make without suffering.

"Responsibility for what?" One of the blondes speaks up. "For the actions of Lettie? How is what she does on him?"

"Toxic masculinity," the other says. "The old guy is rife with it. Very problematic."

"Very, her friend agrees.

"The two of you can be beaten as well," I growl at them.

"No," Allie says. "You touch me and only me."

The blondes grin. "Seems like there's consequences for big mean saurian males too."

I am outnumbered. That is the problem. There are four women and a baby here. I cannot stand against those odds.

I put Allie down. Maybe if I treat her as an ally rather than someone I need to control, I'll be able to even the score somewhat.

"I'm going to give Lettie her baby back, and Cadence and I are going to go into the ship and recover what we need in order to not die," one of the blondes announces.

"What are their names?" I murmur the question to Allie.

"That's Casey on the left, and Cadence on the right," Allie says. "They're brilliant engineers, and they are the reason we are all alive. In this situation, they're in charge."

"That's a good point," Casey says. "This is giving Admirable Crichton."

"I don't think anybody here knows that very niche piece of ancient human artistry, but yes, it is," Cadence agrees.

"What are you referring to?"

"It's a play where the servant becomes the master because the people who were used to being in charge turned out to have no survival skills whatsoever once the shit hit the fan. You all need us. We're the ones who know how to salvage the ship."

"Just let them get on with it," Allie says. "They're brilliant."

"Thank you, we are."