With his beefy hands, Race pulls closed the Dragonfly’s narrow belly hatch.
“Let’s get outta here!” he booms.
I run up the gantry way to the cockpit and, once there, jump into the left seat. I start the Engine On cycle sequence as Race joins me.
I holster my pistol, the barrel still hot to the touch. “I told you to ‘hold your fire!’”
He scowls at me. “I didn’t want to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
“Typical.” I shake my head. “This is my mission! Quest’ll be pissed.”
“Like I’m worried,” Race says. “I’ll start the departure checklist.”
“We don’t have time for the checklist.” I run, ballerina-like, my nimble fingers over the glowing buttons and knobs of the Dragonfly’s cockpit’s overhead control panel. “I’m doing a cold fuel intermix.”
Race leans towards me across the gap that separates the left and right seats. The cockpit feels suddenly cramp. I still smell the pine and juniper from earlier when we’d made our way to Camp Sierra through the thick underbrush of the conifer forest…or is it gin I smell?
“That’s not standard procedure,” he grunts.
“Like you know.”
“Listen, pilgrim,” Race says, “You try riding a jet pack holding a laser cannon to take down a stegosaurus.”
“It was a pterodactyl!” I say. “Look. Just stay cool. She’ll hold.”
Race laughs. “Just like when you tried to steal the Mystery Machine? Spare me. ‘If it hadn’t been for those pesky kids.’ You were so out of your depth.”
“Story of my life,” I say as the spank of ricocheting bullets glancing the cockpit’s reinforced canopy reverberate around us. “And I wasn’t trying to ‘steal’ the Mystery Machine. I was leaving a little missive for Daphne. Stand by for engine start up.”
Moments later, the Dragonfly is airborne, and I throttle up the engines. The Dragonfly goes supersonic.
I pause, then turn to Race. “Where’s Jonny?”
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