23: Keelin
Keelin
Keelin couldn’t sleep. Not after Brice woke her with the news, not after she scrubbed back through sensor inputs.
He’d disappeared again, back into the night. Said something about checking things out. That was fine—one less distraction. And the other three were snuggled down in their bunks.
Keelin didn’t use hers anymore. Most nights, she grabbed a few hours down-time in her pilot’s seat, jumped in the shower to wake herself up in the early hours.
But not this night. She sat forward, watching the second craft.
It was a series 5-c Proteus, unmodified but well cared for. The sensor playback showed a perfect landing that she might’ve believed to be full tech if she hadn’t pulled up heat data and followed the burns. The spiral as it came down was smooth, but there was
