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Relax.
She hastened to pull the helmet over her head, clasping the chin strap. Orion did the same, pulling a much more modern looking black helm from the dash.
“All right,” she declared into the dock comms. “Ready to roll.”
“What?” a muffled voice on the other end snapped.
“Ariel-Twenty-Four requesting departure,” Orion corrected from the copilot’s seat, shooting her a look, amusement in his eyes beneath the narrow visor. Kaia was glad he couldn’t see her cheeks turn red under the helmet.
“Clear to go. Follow lane six, Ariel Twenty-Four.”
Orion glanced at her, and Kaia nodded.
“Roger, Ariel Twenty-Four,” he said.
She zeroed in on the white stripe on the floor, stamped at regular intervals with the number six and clasped the yoke with both hands.
* * *
It was a nerve-racking fifteen minutes to maneuver around all the other craft already in motion. But once she was out of the dock and faced with infinity behind just a couple inches of transparent polycarbonate, Kaia felt she could breathe for the first time in a month.
“Take a lap.” Orion’s voice crackled in her ancient helmet earpiece.
“A lap?” She turned to him, and his chin jerked in the opposite direction from the other craft, making an orderly beeline for theZenith. “Take her around.”
“For real? We won’t get shot down?” Kaia had heard far too much aboutColossal's numerous automated defenses in class, ones that would shoot first and ask questions never.
“No one’s gonna shoot down the heir, princess.” Her stomach tightened at the low chuckle in her ear.
The craft was tiny, almost as small asAhton’s Takein the cockpit. But seeing the black expanse all around them made this feel like the biggest place in the world.Colossal’shull scrolled past them on the starboard side, a massive anchor guiding their way.
Kaia tried to keep her wits, paying attention to the externals of the ship—the data may come in useful later. That only lasted a couple of minutes before she forgot her vigilance and found herself enjoying the view.
The thermaview only worked one-way: they couldn’t look insideColossal, though shields were down and all inhabitants of the ship could see out. Its sleek black exterior was a behemoth compared to the Ariel, yet the empty space all around them reminded Kaia that in the end evenColossalwas just a speck within a speck in the fabric of the universe.
“It’s true, what you said,” she muttered as she leaned back, staring at the expanse ahead.
“What’s that?”
“It’s impossible that there’s no other planet like Earth somewhere.”
His helmet tilted toward her and down in her peripheral vision, and she sensed he was watching her through the visor.
“It’s just that we’re so small… I don’t know if we have it in us to find it.”
“Some of us will. Eventually. Maybe not my mother, or me, or our children. But maybe our children’s children.”
Was Orion capable of thinking that far ahead? An uncomfortable pang cloistered in her chest. He thought there’d be “our children.” It was time to change the subject.
“You said ‘not anymore’ when I asked if you flew.”
“It’s a long story.”
They hadn’t even reachedColossal’sstern yet, and Kaia tapered the propulsion. “I think we’ve got some time.”
He stared straight ahead for a minute, eyes closed behind his visor. Kaia leaned back in her seat and propped a shoe up on the dash—definitely not something a licensed pilot would ever do, but hey… She wasn’t one of those.
“When I was a kid, I went to school and learned a little of everything. Had to know all the jobs. Had to at least be able to fly a shuttle in an emergency,” Orion began. “Flying was my favorite, so I spent as much time as I could in the docks, training on one of these first, then working up to needlefins. Mother thought it was a good distraction, so I didn’t get in her way.”
