She had done it dozens of times. She knew the Goldeneye’s control set intimately. Kin and Dalla, the pilots who’d come aboard two years earlier, even let her go up in their ship, the so-called “lobster.” Flying multiple models kept Ellie from getting too comfortable with one type of craft. She had flown solo, but always with another pilot sitting in the cockpit. On the Goldeneye, it was almost always JT.
Now she would certify this morning as a pilot. Not a copilot. From this day forward, she could legally fly by herself without even an engineer aboard. The bigger spacecraft really only needed engineers for interplanetary and FTL flights. On a Falcon like the one she’d fly now, FTL meant “threading” the hypergates. The emitters on each end of the wormhole really did all the work.
But this? Had she still been around, Suicide would have sat in one of the passenger seats in the cockpit. That part stung. For a day like today, she needed her mother, even if it was the Chosen Mother. Her real mother probably still thought she was dead, despite the Children of Amargosa making the news constantly. Well, if that were the case, Ellie had been happy to embrace the enigmatic Polygamy War pilot as a mother. Mothers were supposed to give a damn about their children. Even JT’s mother managed that, if only from a distance and taking a backseat to Suicide.
Instead, JT invited down Captain Matiece, commander of the Foundation’s first carrier, the Ark Royal. Matiece had allowed Ellie to use the ship’s simulators, but made sure she crashed. In the moment, such sims humiliated her, but now? She had seen a couple of crashes in the lead-up to this flight and could quiz JT and Kin on how they’d handle it.
So Matiece rode in the navigator’s seat. No one would sit in the copilot’s seat. There would be no copilot. This was, as JT put it, flying without the training wheels. She had no idea what “training wheels” meant and didn’t have the time to look it up.
“Nice shirt,” said Matiece, a Euro male in his mid-thirties. He looked older despite regular rejuvenation treatments. Command would do that to a person.
Ellie looked down at herself. At first, she thought he meant the button-down Navy fatigue she’d borrowed from JT and draped over her shoulders. Then she realized Matiece meant the tank top beneath it, its printed words visible through the shirt hanging open. The shirt read, “Fly from Here.” She grinned sheepishly at Matiece. “Thanks. My…” Athena was not her daughter. Not exactly a niece anymore, either. “JT and Tishla’s daughter gave it to me. Said the song that’s from was about me. Never mind it’s five hundred years old.”
Matiece shrugged. “Personally, I’m into Jefivan Hill music. Plucked strings, fiddles.” He gave her a half-grin. “My tastes are simple. Often annoying.”
That made Ellie laugh, and right now, she needed it. Her future rode on this flight. “Well, the girl who gave me this wants to be the first to greet me when we land.”
“Take your seat, then, Nardino. No programmed crashes today.” He looked around the cockpit. “You know, we have Compact Interceptors up on the Ark Royal if you’d rather show off.”
“No thanks. This behemoth is challenging enough.” She strapped into her seat, plugged the headset into her p-com, and began powering up the engines. “Control, this is Goldeneye, Wolf Girl piloting. Doing a certification flight with instructor observing. Flight plan is on file.”
“Copy that, Wolf Girl,” said the controller. “Goldeneye to do flight out to Mt. Tabor and back with one suborbital climb. Good luck, Nardino.”