Jessica had no idea how much time had passed when she stretched and looked up from the screen. The brightness of sunlight that fell in through the window and hit the craft’s instrument panel made her squint. On the other side of the window, the wind stirred clumps of weeds dotted over the expanse of barren land that was the airport. God, she had a headache.
“Keep working.” He spoke Mirani. The screen translated, but she didn’t need the translation anymore. He had said it so often that the patterns in the text almost jumped at her.
He sat on the opposite side of the table, keeping her company as she worked at his screen. A carpet of yellow cards spread out before him. He held a thin pen, with which he wrote out characters in immaculate precision. A jar with three more such pens stood on t
