First Flight [Short Story]

On the lush planet Tameria, a teenager prepares to take their fathers old sky skimmer out for a joyride

“It is the song of the skies and the deep black of space that calls to us. Its endless potential is intoxicating.”

0001.

For as long as Stada been breathing, she’d only ever wanted one thing. To fly. To fly like mortis birds over the Tamerian oceans. Like the ships that ported in space stations and shipyards across The System. To fly just like her father who she’d watched every day as he headed out from their village on his sky skimmer.

Even at fifteen, Stada knew every inch of the skimmer - or as she’d called it Valkyrie. She knew its hull once belonged to a Setian drop ship and that it was over one-hundred years old. The metal wore the scars of battle, its white and red paint job having long lost its lustre thanks to years of rusting out on the shore.

Its bones were handcrafted from way-wood trees that filled the vast forests to the north of their town. The trees were woven into a rib cage and fixed in place using rope strung from the sinew of dead caxel and rinar. Her wings were canvas taken from old ship sails that had long met their end at the hands of storms and rough seas.

Her engine, salvaged from a Thousand Suns Alliance rider that crash-landed off the coast of the Sulu Cliffs during the War, was the Valkyrie’s beating heart. It thrummed with potential whenever her father spun the propeller ready to launch out over the crystal clear waters of Yeran Bay where she had lived her whole life.

Night-rise [Short Story]

Today was her chance. She’d spent every second of her life watching her father, studying how he flew his skimmer. The start-up routine involved carefully easing the throttle before slamming back the stick to send the skimmer sailing upward towards the Tamerian clouds. She’d studied the way he’d have to hammer the right wing with the back of his fist after take off when its baring would come out of alignment. The way he leaned with her as he banked left and right, riding the wind like a bird. This was it. She was ready.

0002.

She hadn’t much considered why this was the right time to fly. For cycles, Stada had thought of the Valkyrie. Waiting for something in the ether to give her the green light to fly. But that day? That day, she didn’t consider anything other than the feeling of the wind in her hair as she rose higher and higher above the surface of her home, fingertips touching the stars.

She woke before the sun. Dim moonlight illuminated her path through town towards the hanger where the Valkyrie had been stored in the years since she’d last flown. She ran a hand across her hull, the cool metal standing her hair on end.

She checked the light, dual stars peering out from behind the mountains beyond the sea, before throwing the propeller. Once, twice, three times, four times. It took a fifth attempt before the engine spluttered into life. It didn’t sound healthy as the Valkyrie breathed out, coughing up all manner of oil and rust from her lungs. But breathe she did.

Stada hopped into the cockpit, lifted the small leather pouch fixed to the underside of the pilot’s seat and took out her father’s old flight goggles. They were too loose, as they always had been, but they still smelt a bit like him so she wore them anyway. After a deep breath, she gently eased the throttle.

“I got this,” she whispered as the Valkyrie made its way out of the hanger and into the burgeoning sunlight. The runway amounted to little more than a mess of compacted sand and grass but the way it stretched out in front of her it might as well have been the pathway to the ancestors for all she cared.

She could feel the Valkyrie warming up around her, the vibration an extension of her own heartbeat. Quickly, she yanked back on the stick to angle the drag fins downward allowing the front wheels to lift, just briefly, off the ground before slamming back down.

“Playing hard to get,” Stada said, smiling. “Let’s try that again.”

She pulled back, hard as she could, her arms already aching from the stress, managing to lift the Valkyrie off the ground a few more feet before landing again. She was running out of runway, the water’s edge coming rapidly closer but all she could hear was the engine and the wind in her ears and she was smiling wider than she’d smiled in the years since he’d been gone.

One. Last. Try.

With eyes half closed, Stada found herself flying over the shores of Yeran Bay, lifting higher and higher into the clouds. Ready to touch the stars.