First Flight
The air inside Astro Armada tasted expensive.
It was a sharp, clinical chill, scrubbed clean of the copper-and-smog tang that usually hung over Area18. For twenty-five years, Elias had breathed the exhaust of ArcCorp’s endless factories—air that settled in the back of the throat like powdered rust. But here, on the suspended glass walkways of the Retail Bridge, the atmosphere was filtered through active carbon and quiet corporate wealth. It smelled faintly of ozone and synthetic leather.
Elias adjusted the collar of his faded, grease-stained flight jacket. It was a surplus civilian bomber jacket, three sizes too big when his father had bought it for him at a scrap-bazaar on his twelfth birthday. Now, the sleeves were frayed at the wrists, and the shoulders were worn thin from years of carrying heavy data-harnesses through the sky-lanes. He felt like a grease stain on a silk sheet.
Around him, the showroom floor stretched out like a cathedral of glass and chrome. Suspended on silent gravity-repulsion pads, an Origin 300i hovered a few feet above the polished obsidian floor, its pearl-white hull reflecting the soft, ambient glow of neon ceiling strips. A sleek Anvil Arrow sat nearby, its aggressive wings folded back like a resting bird of prey, while outside the massive viewing windows, a colossal Aegis Hammerhead loomed against the city skyline. Elias couldn’t help but look and admire the engineering that went into all of them, but none of them could hold his gaze for long.
Instead, his eyes were locked on his wrist. He raised his left arm, tapping the side of his weathered mobiGlas. The holographic display flickered to life, casting a pale blue light across his face. It highlighted the faint scars on his knuckles—souvenirs from a teenage winter spent manually scraping toxic dust from the ventilation shafts of Sector 4.
VEHICLE REGISTERED: Drake Cutter
REGISTRATION ID: DX-409-C
DELIVERY STATUS: In Transit (Riker Memorial Spaceport, Hangar 3)
AUTHENTICATION: Pending Physical Security Handshake.
His chest tightened as the reality began to set in. His ship was on its way. Thirteen years of cleaning grease traps. Thirteen years of running physical data-drives through EM-shadowed alleys when the corporate jammers went hot. Thirteen years of sorting sharp, jagged alloy scrap until his fingers bled and his back locked up. And getting shot three times—he kept count of that, because he absolutely hated getting shot. Every legal, grueling, low-paying odd job a kid from the vents could secure had been stacked penny by penny, credit by credit, into a digital ledger.
“The UEE won’t give you a hull,”his father’s voice echoed in his mind. The old man had said it years ago when they went out past the city limits just to look up at the stars.“And the corps will only lease you one until you die in it. If you want to fly, Elias, you start saving today.”
Elias took a deep breath. He walked past a high-society couple dressed in fine, shimmering MicroTech silks who were speaking in hushed, bored tones with a polished sales representative. The rep glanced at Elias—at his mud-caked work boots, his scuffed knees, and his nervous stride—and immediately looked away, dismissing him as a tourist who had lost his way from the transit platforms.
Good,Elias thought. He didn’t want a sales pitch anyway. He had already bought his ticket out.
“Citizen Elias!”
An excited, friendly voice cut through the quiet hum of the showroom. Elias turned to see a sleek, immaculate sales representative walking toward him. Elias stood a full foot taller than the man. Somehow, he had ended up being the taller one among normal folks in town. His father had been from off-world, which made sense of his height, but growing up in heavy industrial gravity usually didn’t yield such tall stature.
Elias smiled and extended his hand. “Vance!” he called out.
The two men grasped hands, pulling each other into a warm, genuine hug. Elias and Vance had been close friends for a few years now. A while back, when Elias thought he was close to owning his own starship, he had come by Astro Armada to apply for a loan—completely against his father’s advice. Vance had selflessly talked him out of the predatory financing, helped him budget, and made sure Elias waited until he could fully cover the ship and its operating expenses. Vance was incredibly good with numbers, and he was a true friend.
They stepped back, and Vance beamed. “What a day, right?!”
“Hell yeah!” Elias said, unable to hide his glee.
Vance ushered him toward the back of the showroom, where the large viewing bay doors led to the private landing pads. These pads were reserved for showcased ships, prepped and ready for their new buyers to take off. As the heavy doors slid open, Elias’s eyes searched the platform.
There, sitting rugged and blocky against the polished corporate backdrop, was his Drake Cutter.
Vance reached into his tailored breast pocket and pulled out a slim, brushed-titanium case. “You will need this,” he said, smiling as Elias gawked at the ship.
Elias turned excitedly, taking the box gently and with deep admiration. He chuckled to himself and clicked it open with a soft, metallic snap.
Resting inside on a bed of dark velvet was a heavy, blocky drive. Unlike the sleek, glass-and-carbon security fobs used by Origin or Aegis, this was a rugged piece of steel with industrial-grade rivets and the yellow-and-black Drake Interplanetary logo stamped into the metal. It was a cryptographic pairing fob—the master key containing the unmapped encryption codes for the Cutter’s main computer.
“Not a lot of people get this opportunity,” Vance said softly.
Elias nodded, looking up from the key. “A lot of people don’t have good friends.”
Vance smirked. “Good people deserve help every now and then. Despite their past. What will you do now?”
“Go do some contracts,” Elias said as a matter of fact. “I know Baijini Point has some cargo delivery missions up for grabs. It’s not much, but it’ll do to start building up a reputation.”
“Glad to hear you have all the paperwork in order.” Vance extended his arm one last time, and they shook hands like proper gentlemen concluding business. “Try not to scratch the landing pad on your way out,” he teased.
They both shared a small laugh, then hugged again, saying goodbye. Elias wouldn’t be returning to the planet’s surface for a while. Staying up at the orbital space station would be much cheaper than paying ArcCorp’s landing fees. He was ready to live among the stars.
Explore. Discover. See new planets. Meet new people. The adventures awaited him in the deep dark unknown. Vance watched with glee for his friend; Vance walked to his new ship. He took the block out of its case and put it against the keypad on the back of the ship. The pad lit up and Elias taped it open.
The cargo bay doors roared to life as the hydraulics lowered the door. Elias did not wait for it to open all the way, when he could, he stepped through the crack and went into his cargo bay. He was mesmerized.
The interior of the Cutter hit him with a wave of nostalgic comfort. It smelled of industrial hydraulic fluid, fresh rubber insulation, and cheap electrical grease. There were no sleek carpets or smooth wooden accents here. To his left sat a fold-down cot and a tiny, stainless-steel hab counter. To his right, behind a wire-mesh cabinet door, the exposed cooling pipes of the ship’s power plant hummed with a low, steady vibration.
The doors opened and he saw the pilot’s seat on top of a platform. The pilot’s seat was a rugged, high-backed harness chair. Elias sat down, the worn leather of his bomber jacket squeaking against the seat. He grabbed the handles and slid the chair forward on its heavy iron rails until he was locked into the central piloting station.
Three Mult-Functional Displays were black, cold screens reflecting his stupid gleeful face. He could not help but laugh at himself a bit from what it looked like. He glanced over all the switches, settings, and words. His excitement grew more.
He took his fob and inserted it in the card slot and felt a clack-clunk.
The mechanical lock inside the dash grabbed the metal key with a heavy, satisfying snap.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, a deep, mechanical hum rumbled through the floorboards as the main fusion bottle in the back of the ship sparked to life. The amber light on the dash instantly flipped to a solid, warm green. A dispassionately friendly, no-nonsense voice came over the speakers ”Hello, Elias, and welcome aboard your Drake Interplanetary craft. Your systems are online.”
One by one, the three MFD screens flickered to life, casting a bright orange glow across the cockpit glass. The system diagnostics scrolled down the monitors in rapid, blocky text:
DRAKE INTERPLANETARY BOOT SEQUENCE
AVIONICS: ONLINE
SHIELDS: STANDBY
THRUSTERS: WARMING
On Elias’s left wrist, his mobiGlas suddenly vibrated. The holographic display projected a localized notification:
SECURITY SYSTEM: Drake-Pairing-Detected.
CRYPTOGRAPHIC HANDSHAKE: Successful.
PRIMARY PILOT ASSIGNED: Citizen Elias.
PILOT LICENSE VALIDATED: UEE-CPL-894-E-ALPHA
BIOMETRIC PROFILE: Locked.
RADIO CALLSIGN ASSIGNED: Drake DX409C
The dead silence of his childhood of waiting was gone, replaced by the beautiful, roaring symphony of his very own engines.
Elias let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding for thirteen years. He slipped on his new communication headset, adjusting the flexible mic boom. Before he could lift off from Showroom Pad 2, he would have to call up Riker Spaceport Air Traffic Control to request taxi and departure clearance.
He closed his eyes and practiced the cadence, his voice quiet but steady against the backdrop of the engine’s low rumble. It was the same rhythm he had listened to on cheap, static-clogged police band scanners since he was twelve years old.
“Area18 Tower, this is Drake Delta-Xray-Four-Zero-Nine-Charlie,” Elias murmured, testing the roll of the phonetic letters on his tongue. “Requesting departure clearance to orbit. Flight plan logged for Baijini Point.”
He opened his eyes, wrapped his scarred hands around the twin flight sticks, looked out through the strut-framed cockpit window at the neon traffic lanes of ArcCorp, and smiled.
“Drake Delta-Xray-Four-Zero-Nine-Charlie, Area18 Tower. You are cleared for vertical departure, climb and maintain orbit vector zero-niner-zero. Contact Baijini Transit on reach. Welcome to the skies, pilot.”Many cheers and echos of welcomes came over the non-traffic radio and global chatters.
Hearing those words directed athimsent a powerful shiver down his spine. It sounded real. It sounded like he finally belonged up there.
Suddenly, a soft chime echoed in his headset as his helmet’s visor HUD synchronized with the ship’s freshly booted communication suite. A translucent, amber-tinted window flickered to life in the upper-left corner of his field of vision, starting to scroll with rapid text. It was the Stanton system’s Global Chat—the chaotic, warm, and constantly buzzing digital lifeline connecting thousands of independent pilots across the cold expanse of space.
Because Elias’s ship registration and transponder had just registered as active on the ArcCorp planetary comm-array, a system-generated notification broadcasted his departure.
[SYSTEM]: Citizen Elias (DX-409-C) has initialized flight systems at Astro Armada, Area18.
Almost instantly, the chat began to scroll.
[GLOBAL] [Crew-Chief_Mac]: o7 Welcome to the Verse, Elias!
[GLOBAL] [Astro-Geologist]: A new pilot! o7 Safe flying out there, friend.
[GLOBAL] [Star-Runner_99]: o7 Elias. What’s the ride?
[GLOBAL] [Elias_DX409C]: Just registered a Drake Cutter. Heading to orbit now.
[GLOBAL] [Star-Runner_99]: Cutter! Heck yeah. Best starter brick in the galaxy. She’ll get you through anything if you treat her right. Give it a name, it feels more personal that way.
[GLOBAL] [Cargo_Mama]: Welcome aboard, Cutter pilot! Mind the salvage debris around Baijini Point today, the local scrap-dealers have been messy with their wrecks.
[GLOBAL] [Scrap_King_88]: Hey, we clean up eventually! It’s honest work.
[GLOBAL] [Cargo_Mama]: Sure you do, Scrap. Anyway, Elias, if you get turned around or need a escort crew, just yell in chat. Lots of friendly guns in Stanton. o7
[GLOBAL] [Elias_DX409C]: Copy that. Thanks for the heads up. See you in the black. o7
Elias stared at the scrolling messages, a lump forming in his throat. For twenty-five years, he had been a ghost in the machine of ArcCorp—just another nameless kid crawling through the dark vents of Sector 4, ignored by the high-society elites and the corporate representatives. But out here, before his thrusters had even left the pad, he was already being welcomed. He wasn’t just a laborer anymore. He was a pilot. He was a citizen. He was part of something bigger.
He opened his eyes, wrapped his scarred hands around the twin flight sticks, and looked out through the strut-framed cockpit window at the blazing neon traffic lanes of ArcCorp. He smiled, feeling the raw power of the thrusters waiting on his command.
“Let’s get to work,” he whispered, and nudged the thrusters forward. He felt his stomach jump as the Cutter lifted up a little, then gave it the full force needed to lift up off the pad. The ship didn’t rise with the effortless, floating grace of an Origin yacht. It fought the gravity of ArcCorp, lifting inch by inch like an angry iron anvil being hoisted by rusted chains. The cockpit shuddered, the dashboard metal vibrating in a violent, rattling chatter that made the analog gauges dance. Elias’s heart hammered against his ribs in perfect synchronization with the engine’s pulse.
“Come on girl,” Elias murmured, his eyes scanning the pitch-and-roll indicators on the center MFD. “Up we go.”
He pulled the landing gear lever back. Beneath him, there was a succession of massive, bone-jarringclunksas the heavy hydraulic struts retracted into the Cutter’s underbelly, followed by the high-pitched whine of the landing gear doors sealing shut. The aerodynamic drag dropped instantly, and the ship leapt upward. Elias turned on his music and played the song he chose to be his first launch song. It has a hard rock to it but that old earth country and celtic feel.
Outside his cockpit glass, the Astro Armada showroom began to shrink, its polished walkways and gleaming luxury displays falling away into the dirty gold smog of Area18. He saw Vance waving at him. Even though he could not see him, Elias waved back. He guided the Cutter up into the canyons of the city-planet.
The scale of ArcCorp was staggering. On either side of him, monoliths of rusted iron and reflective glass soared miles into the sky, their sheer walls plastered with colossal, flickering holographic advertisements. A massive, rotating neon globe of the Centermass corporation cast a crimson wash over his console, followed immediately by a fifty-story-tall, shimmering projection of a Miss Widow cosmetics model.
Elias navigated the designated vertical flight corridor, keeping his speed strictly under 150 meters per second to avoid the wrath of the local corporate security forces. Massive public transit shuttles hummed past on parallel gravity-rails, packed to the glass with weary shift-workers. Below them, the red-and-amber rivers of civilian sky-car traffic flowed in endless, blinding streams. Elias had looked up at those streams his entire life, dreaming of the day he would look down on them.
Now, he was.
“Passing altitude: five thousand meters,” Elias read aloud, checking his altimeter.
The air was thinning, but the hardest part of ArcCorp’s atmosphere lay ahead: the persistent, super-heated industrial smog layer. As the Cutter climbed, the bright neon lights of Area18 began to blur, swallowed by a thick, churning soup of copper-colored clouds. The wind began to howl, slamming against the blunt nose of the Cutter.
The ship bucked violently. The thruster alarms gave a brief, panicked chirp on his MFD as the wind shear tried to throw him off course. Elias braced his boots against the rudder pedals, his knuckles turning white as he wrestled the flight sticks. Drake ships were built without internal atmospheric dampeners; you felt every pocket of turbulent air, every crosswind, every drop in pressure. Elias loved it. It made him feel like he was actuallyflying, not just riding in an automated transit pod.
“Ten thousand meters. Smog clearing.”
The dirty orange fog outside his window suddenly fractured, letting in blinding shafts of pure, unfiltered sunlight. A moment later, the Cutter broke through the top of the cloud layer.
Elias gasped.
Below him, the planet of ArcCorp was a sea of endless, metallic clouds, glowing like molten gold under the light of the Stanton star. The tops of the tallest megastructures poked through the smog-sea like jagged, industrial islands of steel.
Above him, the dirty copper-orange of the sky was rapidly cooling into a deep, velvety indigo, then into a piercing, absolute black. The bright, sharp points of distant stars began to prick through the darkness, unhindered by the city’s light pollution.
“Twenty thousand meters,” Elias whispered, his voice trembling slightly.
The heavy, dragging weight of ArcCorp’s gravity began to slip away, replaced by the strange, floating lightness of microgravity. The loose strap of his flight jacket drifted upward, hovering in mid-air. In the back of the ship, the gravity generator hummed to life, stabilizing the interior environment to a comfortable 1.0G, but the psychological release was instant. The burden of the surface was gone.
The roaring scream of the atmospheric wind died down, fading from a howl, to a whistle, to a whisper, and then, finally, to nothing.
The silence of the vacuum of space enveloped the Cutter.
The only sound left was the quiet, rhythmic purr of the ship’s fusion core and the steady click-whir of the life support recycling the cabin air. Elias stared out into the deep, endless dark, the stars reflecting in his wide eyes.
Right on cue, his visor HUD chimed, receiving a fresh data-packet from the orbital array.
[GLOBAL] [Crew-Chief_Mac]: o7 Elias, you make it up yet? Orbit radar says a new transponder just cleared the smog wall.
[GLOBAL] [Elias_DX409C]: Just broke atmosphere. It’s... unbelievable up here.
[GLOBAL] [Crew-Chief_Mac]: Haha, never gets old, does it? Welcome to the black, kid. o7
[GLOBAL] [Cargo_Mama]: o7 Safe travels, Elias. Baijini Point should be visible on your nose now.
Elias looked straight ahead. Rising over the curved horizon of the copper-colored planet was a massive, spinning wheel of metallic gray and industrial silver metal and solar panels, glittering like a diamond crown.
Baijini Point.
Elias smiled, the tension finally leaving his shoulders. He reached down and toggled his quantum drive spooler, the low, powerful whine of the engine building in the deckplates.
“I’m here,” Elias whispered to the stars. “I’m finally here.”
