Chapter 9: First Flight

Sky extended his fist for Ada to bump.

“What’s your name, little thing?”

“Ada.”

“Just Ada?”

“Ada from the SharePlace on Caliban-1.”

“A SharePlace? Wow, you know I once had a girlfriend from a SharePlace?”

“No? Really?” Ada asked, very intrigued.

“A camp on the big League planet, Polydore. She was amazing for cuddles, but toward the end, we fought a lot. And she was an ex from Dante, so when we argued, she hit like a bandit. Now, may the blind gods bless her, she’s in the After, probably tormenting some poor sucker like me.”

“The HS kidnapped her from her SharePlace?”

“Oh no, we weren’t at war then. She came on her own.”

“Why?”

“Ha! One day she told me: ‘The best thing about being able to own stuff isn’t having it but being able to give gifts.’ Bad temper but a heart of gold.” (He kissed his fingers, then sent an invisible kiss fluttering toward the sky like a butterfly.) “Oh, Andromeda, one day I’ll find you in the After! Anyway, this is your first trip, I bet?”

“During the first one, I was asleep.”

“Yeah, asleep. Alright, so have you seen the cabin in the back? It’s a complete dump, isn’t it? So I’m giving you a choice: either you sit in that awful cabin with a flickering neon light, or you come up front with me, like a co-pilot, and you can see everything as we travel through the stars. What’s it gonna be?”

“I want to go up front!”

“Of course, you want to go up front! But I’m warning you, if you puke, you clean it!”

“I’m totally not gonna throw up!”

“Wait till you hit zero gravity, little thing!”

“I’ve spent 9 years in zero gravity, big guy!”

“Alright, climb aboard!”

For the first time in a long while, Ada hopped with joy.

They climbed into the cabin. The seats were soft—they adjusted with gentle mechanical sounds to fit Ada’s frame. It wasn’t tidy or clean: it smelled of food, and there were wrappers everywhere. Buttons and levers filled the console. More concerning were the flashing warning lights, which Sky covered with objects to ignore them.

“Okay, Madam Ambassador from the SharePlace. All ships basically work the same way. Three operating modes for three situations. First, do you see this main lever?”

He pointed to a lever that tilted in all directions with a button on top.

“Once we start the engine, moving this lever activates the thrusters. Fuel isn’t unlimited, so we mostly use this to hover a few dozen meters or make fine adjustments. Then there’s the Inertial Grapple.”

He pulled out a mobile control panel with arrows and numeric keys, connected to the ship by a cable.

“This is for interstellar travel. It fires an immaterial grappling hook that attaches to an orbital platform. Then the grapple pulls us along. An amazing thing we found on Mars ages ago, which our parents used to colonize the mythical Earth system. And you know the best part? We still don’t understand how it works. Transient tech.”

“Can it attach to anything?”

“Yeah, even to someone. Poor guy—they’d be shredded to bits. But it’s heavily regulated. And you need skill: the grapple will propel you toward the platform, and the trick is not crashing into it. There are safeguards, but real pilots—and I think you want to become one—grapple in a way that avoids the platform and heads for the stars.”

“Can it latch onto another planet?”

“Sure, but the grapple travels at light speed. If we hook Calchas-3, for example, it’ll latch on in 2 hours and 30 minutes. Annoying, right? But not every planet has a platform or even a moon. Sometimes you just can’t take off every day. Ready?”

“Weren’t there three operating modes?”

“We’ll get to that later. Let’s go. I hate this goddamn cop planet.”

He checked the straps securing Ada to her seat, pulled levers that tightened the seals with a hissing sound, pressed various buttons showing 100% values, and repeatedly flipped a yellow switch until it turned green. With a lurch, the Raven took off. A Xeno marshaller made an irritated gesture at the rough departure, and as the Nomad gained altitude, it tilted its nose toward the sky, where placid clouds drifted.

Sky pulled the inertial grapple controls toward him. A computerized reticle targeted some unknown objective, and the Raven was yanked skyward. Ada was pinned to her seat by the force, her chest and stomach compressed. Seconds stretched as the clouds swelled, then vanished. The sky paled, then darkened violently, revealing millions of stars.

The Raven flew within a hundred meters of a mysterious, flat stellar object: the grappling platform, and then continued its course into the void. The acceleration ceased, and Ada once again felt the familiar lightness of zero gravity.

Sky turned his head toward her and pointed to a spot where she could throw up. But her stomach was used to it, and her inner ear quickly adjusted.

“Now let’s talk about interstellar travel,” Sky said, pointing to the last piece of equipment.

It was an ancient-looking computer, like a child’s keyboard with oversized buttons and a tiny screen that displayed only four colors. It was no bigger than a matchbox and half-buried under rolls of paper that floated slightly in the absence of gravity.

“How old are you, thirteen?””Yeah, almost.””Yeah, you can handle this. So, do you know where Calchas-3 is?”

He gave one of the thrusters a burst on one side, spinning the Raven 180 degrees. The planet Calchas, green and blue with massive oceans tormented by endless storms, appeared before Ada, immense and round. At that sight, Ada realized she would become a pilot, that she would have her own ship, and that she would never tire of seeing new planets. Sky, meanwhile, looked completely bored, casually chewing on a snack.

“It orbits Calchas, a classic yellow dwarf. A star. Now imagine you’re on Calchas-3, and with a magic machine, you become the only thing no longer orbiting the star. What happens?”

“The planet moves away, and I stay behind.”

“Yeah, if you’re on the right side of it. You’re sharp, aren’t you? That’s the principle of Interstellar Drift—or just Drift. You see these buttons numbered 1 through 6? Button 1 is when you want to stay still relative to the planet. It moves away without you. Button 2 is for the star. It doesn’t look like it, but it’s moving super fast. Two seconds in position 2, and you’re already far away. If you miscalculate, you’ll never be found. Button 3 is for the galaxy. Button 4 for the galactic cluster. Button 5 is for the supergalactic cluster. Button 6 is ‘absolute.’ That’s the big one. Even includes the universe’s expansion. They say a few days on 6, and you’ll cross a galaxy.”

“Have you ever tried it?”

“Plenty of idiots have. They were never seen again.”

“So you just choose a force and activate it for a certain amount of time?”

“Yeah, at the right moment. That’s why we have maps. Old-school maps.”

He unfurled a paper map, which folded awkwardly at the edges. It had no scale, and the positions of the stars were symbolic. It showed Calchas, an arrow pointing to Verona, another from Verona to Prospero, and a third from Prospero back to Calchas. In handwritten letters, the map was labeled “Triangle of Fortune.” Along each arrow, it listed:

DEPARTURE (with a time, e.g., 13:56:04)

MARGIN (a time tolerance, e.g., 1000 seconds)

FORCE (a number from 1 to 6)

DURATION (in seconds)

“You see, we’re at Calchas. Let’s say we want to go to Prospero. First, you see, we have to pass through Verona. Then, we wait for the specified time so that ... well, the stars align. Then we use the required force and duration, and we’re there.”

“And the margin?”

“If we’re a bit early or late, we can jump a little before or after. The farther we are from the ideal departure time, the farther we arrive from the system, and the risk increases. For big planets like Prospero, the routes are well-calculated, and we have margins of hours or even half-days. For Clelia, it’s down to 10 seconds.”

He folded the map.

“The Triangle’s nice because there are multiple windows per day, but some destinations are a pain—only one window per week. For Clelia, your damned destination, it alternates between every four days and every seven days. Between that and the tight margin, it’s a real backwater.”

On the ancient terminal, he searched for Ariel as the destination and confirmed.

“It’s about 10 minutes from now via Ariel. That’s why that government bitch pissed me off, showing up at the last second. If we missed the window, I’d be stuck for a goddamn week longer on Calchas-3. A WEEK! She did it on purpose so we wouldn’t have to talk about her pay.”

“Who makes the maps? Are there cartographers?” (Ada could completely imagine herself as one.)”Give me two minutes, please.”

He tapped on the Drift terminal. A countdown ticked its final seconds. When it hit zero, a soft hum sounded, and Calchas-3 vanished, perhaps to the side. The stars shifted in unison as if gusts of wind had swept the Nomad, spinning it.

Within two seconds, another planet appeared, immense, like a cosmic athlete had hurled it at full speed.

A vast green planet, without oceans but dotted with clouds, loomed large, eclipsing a yellow sun. As the darkness of the eclipse took hold, thousands—no, tens of thousands—of lights appeared in the void. Ships of all types and sizes. The radio burst to life with countless messages, and Sky immediately turned it off.

“Ariel, the Great Gate to the Beyond. It’s from here that all the colonists depart to hundreds of virgin worlds ... including Clelia. Alright, we’re on time. I’m programming the Drift. The maps, you asked? I think at first, they sent out tons of probes with AIs on board. Now they have a planet—an artifact left by the Transients—called Leonardo. Basically, a giant computer. It’s reserved for the Stellar Fleet, so no touching. But if you manage to find new routes, you could make a fortune, kid. Imagine a direct route between Prospero and Verona. That would be worth a fortune.”

“Could you take me to see Leonardo?”

“Maybe one day ... I’ll give you a discount.”

“How much does a ship like the Nomad cost?” Ada asked, watching all the ships entering and exiting Drift.

“Secondhand, like this one? I’d say 250,000 without the pod.”

“Did you buy it?”

“No, I got it as a gift. A story you wouldn’t believe, so there’s no point in telling you.”