One Endless Night - A Mandalorian Fanfic

Chapter 14

"I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold," the other bounty hunter said.

Mando jerked on the controls, slamming them backwards. The other ship sailed by them, directly into range. "That's my line," he growled and he fired, destroying the other ship in a fireball. Debris from the other ship floated past them.

Once the Crest was stabilized Yara jumped to her feet and immediately began working on the damaged systems. Mando may have beaten the other bounty hunter, but the Razor Crest had taken a lot of critical damage.

There were alarms going off all around them and sparks flying from damaged systems and frying wires. The two of them worked silently in perfect tandem. Mando began flipping switches turning off the systems they could spare that were malfunctioning. Yara leaned over him to reach more of the control panel. He tried to move, to get out of her way, but he was trapped in his seat. The ship jolted again as one of the engines sputtered out. The movement threw Yara sideways. Mando caught her with a gentle hand on her waist as she almost fell straight into his lap.

Yara was so focused on the ship she hardly noticed as she sat half perched on his lap, half leaning against the arm of his chair. Her fingers flew over the controls and a deep frown formed on her face as she studied the read outs.  "We're losing what little fuel we had left," she warned him gravely.

The entire ship went dark as they lost main power. Yara froze. It was only then that she noticed Mando's hand resting lightly on her hip, steadying her as she worked, half perched on his lap. She went very still. Mando shifted beneath her and cleared his throat. She immediately jumped up off his lap as though she had been burned. She hadn't meant to intrude on his person space, especially after he had made such an effort to put space between them.

"Right we should-" she stammered as she tried to hide her embarrassment. She moved towards the back of the cockpit. "Emergency power, emergency power," she chanted half under her breath.

She slid around the chair and moved through the inky blackness towards the control panel. She felt movement behind her, but it was so dark it was almost impossible to see anything. If she remembered correctly they were in a binary star system, but the ship was facing away from both the stars. She ran her hands over the controls, trying to remember the location of the emergency power master switch. She went very still as she felt the gentle pressure of Mando's hand against her low back to let her know he was there.

"Here," he said in a low tone. His voice coming through the modulator was a raspy. He had owned the ship for years and had every piece of it memorized. He reached around her and flipped the switch. The lights came back on and Mando quickly dropped his hand and put space between them once more as he turned back to the controls.

"Thanks," Yara muttered, feeling her ears burning red. The alarms started back up and she began shutting down systems to contain the damage.

"We're running only on emergency power," Yara told him. "Hopefully there's a port nearby."

Mando's hands were already flipping through the charts. "There's one," he said. "Couple hours away."

Yara pressed her lips together as she looked over the read outs. "Couple hours?" she asked.

Mando nodded. "Three," he confirmed.

"It's going to get cold in here," she said grimly and she routed as much of the life support as they could spare to the engines.

Mando stepped up into her space to look for himself. "We'll be running on fumes, but we should make it," Mando told her reading over her shoulder.

"Should?" She asked. She turned her head and was almost surprised to find the surface of his helmet only a couple inches from her.

Mando turned his head and just stared into her face silently. He didn't want to scare her, but he also wouldn't lie to her. This was going to be close. She knew enough about ships to be able to recognize the position they were in herself.