“Oh, dope! We’re still alive. Nice!” said Jack.

Jack and I high-fived after surviving what basically a 10,000-mile free fall through the skin of our teeth. Long story short, after getting into the escape pod and jettisoning from the ship, our pod was struck by one of the high-altitude floating masses that drifted through the Shattered World’s uppermost atmosphere. The pod’s rockets were damaged for a hot minute, and we just sort of fell under the sway of gravity. Falling and screaming, and falling, until by some miracle the rockets came back online.

We physically couldn’t NOT high-five after that. It’d be like trying to make the like-poles on two, ultra-powerful, magnets touch. It wasn’t even just Jack and me, who were high-fiving. Everyone in the pod was high-fiving, and hugging, kissing, and just making the kind of happy, frantic, noises we fleshlings make when we unexpectedly find we’ve managed to avoid biting it.

Basically, we got an escape pod as planned. It wasn’t hard. This wasn’t some crappy ship designed lackadaisically, by someone with no common sense. The path to the emergency shuttles was clearly marked on the walls and floor. With us moving in stealth, no one tried to stop us and no one noticed us as we made our way through the ship as the merchants, and their guards, fought against a group of nasty-looking men and women, that were doing their best to kill everything in sight.

“Wait a minute. Uh…Who the hell are you?” said a voice. Interrupting. Me and Jack’s celebration.

I froze and looked to my right, where I saw a man glaring at me in suspicion. It was the second guy I’d high-fived after High-fiving Jack. He was a tall man with dark skin, a buzz-cut, and a beefy build. He wore the uniform that the ship’s guards had been wearing. I used my data-sampling on the man reflexively and learned his name was Sigi Protz.

Jack jumped in with that second. Proffering her tiny hand, the man glared down at her, and then after a second he gingerly took her hand in his much bigger hand and shook it.

“Hi, my name is Jack Calloway. This is my associate Jill Calloway. We were stowing away aboard your ship when the pirates arrived,” said Jack.

My brows jumped up when I heard Jack give us away like that, but I held my peace because I had to assume she knew what she was doing, and even if she didn’t know what she was doing, it wouldn’t help our case for us to squabble in front of the man.

“You’re stowaways?!” said Sigi.

“Oh, yeah...We recently found ourselves in a position where we were desperately in need of a new locale that would be more conducive for the furtherance of our goals, and the preservation of our mental and physical health. Since we lacked the funds and time to book a flight in the proper fashion, we regretfully had to get creative with our procurement of transportation,” said Jack. Keeping her expression straight, and looking just the right amount of ashamed/guilty, near the end.

Sigi just sort of stared at her like she’d spoken in some foreign tongue. Then he looked over at me clearly expecting me to translate.

I blinked slowly and gave the man a more succinct explanation.

“There was danger at home. So we had to flee.”

“Ah...Mhm…” said the man. Not really making it clear whether he understood what "I" was saying either. It was enough to make me wonder if we were all still speaking the same common-tongue.

“Oh, leave them alone, Protz. They’re just kids, and if they were as bad as all that, they could have taken the escaped-pod by themselves and left us to die,” said another of our pod-mates. An aloof-looking, tallish woman with an average build, olive skin, gray eyes that were worryingly knowing, and short silver hair. The woman was dressed in a business suit like many of the merchants on the ship had been dressed. My data-sampling told me that her name was Alina Sachs.

She was right, we probably could have taken the escape pod for ourselves. In fact, that was initially our intention. However, by the time we got to the escape-pods, we saw that there weren’t that many there. Two of the six pods had already been damaged by the stupid cannon that the pirates had been firing our ship. Three of the four remaining pods had already been taken. We had the last escape pod. We still could and would have left if it was only us there at the time. However, there were people right behind us and we couldn’t just leave them.

Those other people were basically innocents. People who’d done us no harm. People who worked on the ship, and had been sent off to escape and live, while the guards held the pirates back. Our choice was leaving by ourselves and leaving the people to die, or slipping inside the pod while basically invisible, and waiting, so that people behind us could catch up.

The smarter choice was probably the former option. However, I’d seen and experienced enough messed up things via my stories to know that doing this, would probably not be doing Jack any favors. She’d already been pushed to a place where it’d probably be very easy to paint her world black by pushing her down a dark path, and I could easily see it starting here, if we chose to condemn those people to death by taking the last escape pod for ourselves.

“Mhm...Yes, ma’am,” said Sigi.

“Ugh...And stop ‘that’ too...You know, that’s only for when we’re working and such, and this ‘situation’ is certainly not that,” said Alina.

“Uh, right...Alina,” said Sigi.

“So, Sigi...We’re certainly in a fine kettle of fish. You’re the gungho super Lieutenant. Tell me, what do we do now?” said Alina. Pressing the unlock button on the escape pod's exit hatch. The hatch opened with a hiss and she stepped outside. Followed by Sigi. Followed by the six other folk who’d been in the pod with us. Followed by Jack and I.

“Well, if the readings in my path-finder talisman can be trusted we’ve at least made it to the 14th Pearl as planned. So we just need to figure out exactly where we are. Get secure, and hale a rescue,” said Sigi. Looking over at another fellow in one of the guard uniforms.

“Hm, sounds reasonable...Since all I know is how to make profits. I’ll leave you and your men to it, and try to get my fellow civilians settled,” said Alina.