“Hello? ... Pet? ... Anyone home? ... Petra?”

“Huh?” Petra shook her head and refocused her gaze on the glistening black emptiness ahead. “Sorry, Darv, I must’ve dazed out for a minute.”

“Yeah, you started drifting too,” her companion teased back. “Let’s just get this med-freighter to sector seven-alpha then you can daze away till the last star fades.”

The mere mention of their mission gave Petra a little sick feeling in her gut. No problem, she thought. Two starbirds to escort an unarmed med-freighter through three Deronian sectors.

“Remind me again why we took this job.” Darv joked into his helmet mic.

Petra shifted her wing lift to bring her bird side by side with Darvs. To her left she could see the smooth curves of the modified extank enclosures Darv had installed on their birds only a yarin ago. “You have something better to be doing, Darvus, than earning ten each?”

“Not dying?”