NOVEL NEXT 24.Phoenix Rising
After the name change was completed, my other tasks were easy by comparison. The Pilot’s Federation didn’t even require me to talk to anyone and a computer read my new ID and spat out a certificate of licensing that kept all of the endorsements I had earned. The vessel registrar was nearly as easy and all I needed was to present the order, my new ID and the original ‘amateur built’ title for the Oxide-77 to the attendant and he was able to change the name on the title without fuss. All told, I really only stayed at the embassy for three hours for the entirety of my business there.
I came out of the doors walking on air. I was sorely tempted to do some shopping while in the capital, but I didn’t want to fill up a wardrobe I wouldn't have for much longer, especially not knowing how much room I would have in my future posting.
That didn’t mean I couldn’t window shop or enjoy the city’s natural areas. Naturally growing trees were scattered through the city park that was near the embassy. I walked around for some time, taking in the blurred orange horizon and the greenery. I did end up having to take a few breaks to rest. The higher gravity wasn’t overly much for me, but it was definitely noticeable how much faster it wore on my body.
Window shopping was a lot of fun as well. With so much more space and the well established economy, Treysana had a lot more of a market for fashion. There wasn’t a great need on D’reth for fancy clothiers, since most of the residents were just dock workers. I was really looking forward to when I could finally go shopping for myself and buy all of the cute clothes I had always wanted.
My afternoon meal ended up being quite the treat too. Planet-side, it was significantly cheaper to get real meat, and I was able to find an old fashioned hamburger at a reasonable price. The meaty sandwich was stacked high with cheese, tomato, and lettuce. I was happily munching on it when my wrist bleeped.
Once again, I was impressed by the promptness of the Ericksons. Less than two hours after the task had been completed, I had received word from Rachael Erickson that the draft for my contract was ready for review.
Using my holopadd, I accessed the document and began scanning through it. Suffice to say, I was flabbergasted. The proposed salary was more than twenty thousand credits higher than I had made in my last year of salvage work and it seemed that Marcus hadn’t been kidding about the ‘generous sign-on bonus’. The purchase price for the computer module was listed and the cost for expedited service on that delivery was deducted from the bonus as promised, but even minus that expense, the bonus left me reeling.
The entirety of my savings account totaled to only slightly more than half of the complete package. To make matters even better, fully half of the bonus was going to be given on the first monthly pay cycle with the rest split up between the next four. The benefits package was nothing to be sneezed at either. Full medical coverage with standard clinics and ship-board services plus fully covered emergency care that required external services. Room and board were included as promised along with one hundred percent fuel costs and seventy-five percent of all maintenance costs for my ship. There were, of course, exclusivity clauses, but I could hardly care less. A contracted pilot couldn’t ask for more.
About the only thing I wasn’t a massive fan of in the contract was that when the services of my ship weren’t needed, I would be serving shifts on board whatever ship I was stationed on, working as an assistant engineer and back-up helmsman along with other tasks as needed by the captain. It was essentially a senior staff position, but it wasn’t quite what I was really looking for in life to be doing mechanical work on another large ship. It was a trade-off I could accept, though, and it seemed fair to keep me working during the long stretches of time that the ship would be traveling and the Oxide would be sitting in a bay.
Without a second thought, I signed on the appropriate spots, giddily using my now legal signature. It being a draft, I likely could have done some further negotiations to possibly get more, but I was too excited. I had never gotten so much before and wouldn’t have felt right being greedy.
It wasn’t long after that I decided to get going again. It was already getting into the evening and I didn’t want to take too long heading back to D’reth. Getting a taxi, I rode back to the spaceport. Shift had apparently changed since I’d been there that morning and there was now a young man at the front desk. He seemed to notice the wings that were pinned to my top and nodded his head in my direction.
“Good evening, pilot! How may I assist you?”
I smiled back and resisted the urge to nod as well. “Matson, here to depart after services.”
He asked what I needed and I responded that I just needed fuel. The price was a bit more than it was up on the station, but not terribly so. Back in the hangar, a line worker was already connecting a hose to the fuel port on the Oxide. I tapped my wrist against the exterior hatch and it unsealed.
“Hey, Vox, I’m back.”
“Welcome aboard, Miss Adresta Mirai Matson. Records indicate that a declaration of name change has been issued. Congratulations. Security protocols were not breached during your stay.”
There was a slight blush on my face, hearing the name spoken aloud again. “Thank you, Vox. Get me environmental information and start getting my flight plan together, please.”
“Of course, Miss Adresta.”
Planning went as it had earlier in the day. Because the ship was being fueled, I couldn’t bring up primary systems yet, but it would still be a bit before I could actually leave. When the lineman gave me the heads-up that fueling was finished, I went back to the office to settle my bill. My tab was far from insignificant, but I wasn’t really mad, knowing the amount I would be getting soon enough.
I was thanked for my patronage and I was able to return to my ship. My flight plan was filed after another ten minutes of work and I contacted ground control to begin that process as well. The hangar opened and the pad began rolling out to the flight line.
With full tanks and a full belly, I pressed the ever so familiar button and felt the rumble of the reactor kicking into cycle. Gravity be damned, it was time to fly
“Oxide-77 to Treysana departure. Requesting take-off clearance from transient pad Golf 2-7. Flight plan on file.”
The comms for control at the Treysana spaceport were a lot more crowded than D’reth’s ever were, but the controllers were efficient in their jobs and so it only took a brief moment before they were calling back at me.
“Oxide-77, you are cleared for liftoff. Departure heading one-zero-five. Climb and maintain ten thousand meters at or below three hundred meters per second airspeed until you’ve cleared class bravo airspace, then climb as able. Contact orbital control above six-five thousand meters.”
The exchange was quick and to the point as always. The controllers on the station were excellent at their job, but they didn’t handle anywhere near the amount of traffic a proper spaceport saw and so sometimes got a bit more lax in their attitude. These ones, however, were consummate professionals in every way.
I gently throttled up the ventral thrusters to get off the pad and then shifted to horizontal flight controls. Within a minute I was just under the speed of sound, cruising away from the spaceport. Upon reaching the city limits, and thus the edge of the local restricted airspace, I began climbing and gaining speed rapidly. It didn’t take long before a sonic shock cone passed over the bubble cockpit.
At the required altitude, I leveled off at most of mach two and contacted orbital control to get my clearance for ascent. It came just as quickly.
So started my ejection burn.
In order to achieve the necessary thrust, tritium reactor fuel was dumped directly into the primary engines, where it was added to the plasma flow and burned. It was a terrible drain on the fuel supply, but it was also the best way to get into orbit from a class M planet with gravity within general human tolerances. This resulted in a very visible trail of burning plasma streaming out from behind me.
Once again, the frame of my little ship rattled under the stress and I was pushed into my seat under the g-forces, my lungs straining to keep pulling in air. Engines roaring, my airspeed reached nine thousand meters per second by the time I reached the Karman line. As I left the atmosphere, I was able to throttle back the engines to avoid wasting too much fuel with the afterburner. The shaking stopped and I was able to breathe freely once more.
My time in orbit this time around was significantly shorter. I was soon approaching D’reth. Landing in my hangar felt a lot better than the planetary landing I had done earlier. The skids touched down softly in my hangar. Systems shut down and I lovingly patted the control panel. My little rust bucket had made a hard trip today and flew like a champ. My pride in the work I had put into her was strong.
Surprisingly, I really wasn’t tired, despite my long day. I was too excited about my success of the day and the incredible things to come. Seeing no point in lazing about my apartment, I stayed in the hangar. Knowing that I’d be mounting them before long, I pulled the nacelle rack out from the wall to work on them.
The bare components were all in place, but lacked the shielded plating that protected the delicate pieces. Long ago, I had removed it all and restored each piece to serviceable condition. It had really only been metal work with a coating of radiation shielding that was easily obtained. I had never installed it, though, since it would have been pointless to assemble it all just to have to rip it apart again later to finish repairing the internals.
Music again echoed through the hangar, this time much more upbeat to match my mood compared to the last time I had worked on the nacelles. The hand I’d been dealt was far from ideal, but I was turning the page and silencing all of my fears. I was taking these footsteps, going higher and higher.
At some point I was distracted from the plating and somehow ended up pulling up panels inside the Oxide in order to access the computer array. The empty space where the nav computer would go needed to be exposed if I was going to be installing one, after all. Of course, that led me to pulling the power relays apart for the computer as well. I had spliced over the relays that were meant to feed into the nav computer in order to install a more modern and powerful primary computer.
The additional computing power was used to allow Vox to keep a portion of her processes aboard while I was flying. With her doing that, even when my implants couldn’t reach her core array I could still use her abilities to help fly and assist with other tasks. It was incredibly useful.
I would have to add additional power runs to install the new computer module and I set to work on that as well. ADHD was a fun thing.