Space Orcs- By the Seat of her Pants

marveloverthinker:

Skrakt took no pride when he told people that he was the finest pilot in the Federation Fifth Fleet, operating out of Arcturus. Pride was a byproduct of uncertainty, an accident of coincidence and perceived achievement, and for him, probability had no place in the cockpit. He flew well because he knew every eventuality, every variable, and took the path that assured safe arrival for ship and crew, as was a pilot’s duty.

It was, therefore, something of a bother when Candace came on board. A recent graduate of the Federations Human Ascent program, she was among the first of her species to learn how to fly under the power of Photocollision drive, and had requested a placement on Skrakt’s ship when she was attached to the Fifth fleet for observation.

Oh, her management of the controls was exemplary (he had worried that her oddly mismatched limbs would present difficulty, but she had simply shrugged and said it would be “just like driving stick,”) but she also was unbelievably reckless. He had, on no fewer than four occasions, watched her simply slide into the pilot seat and take the controls without even a GLANCE at the sensor readouts, once narrowly avoiding a blindside Asteroid that came within a dozen kilometers of removing the ship’s rear engines with severe blunt force trauma.

Skrakt knew that piloting took patience, but it had run out, and he had informed the fleet Admiral, under no uncertain terms, that Candace was not to fly any ship that he was responsible for. It was potentially a diplomatic problem, but that was for diplomats to solve. To his great surprise, however, her only reaction was a smile.

“I hate when other jocks fly my birds, too.”

Then, the Althalan fleet attacked.

Skrakt’s ship, which had been busy surveying a star nursery, was caught by surprise, and the shields only barely prevented the original salvo from ripping the hull clear off. Caught between the fleet and the stars, Skrakt saw no clear escape, and for the first time in his piloting career, didn’t know what to do.

Candace, sitting in the co-pilot’s chair, pointed to the nursery. “Go through the stars! They’d be crazy to follow us!”

While Skrakt was forced to agree, it wasn’t the reassurance she clearly thought it was. “We haven’t mapped it!” He howled. “It’s a maelstrom of radiation, hot gasses, and forming stars! We don’t know all the variables… we barely know a quarter of them!”

“You gotta feel it out…” she responded. While he stared ahead, almost blank in terror, the ship rocked under yet another salvo from the Althalan fleet. She grabbed her flight controls, feet splaying out to reach the lower controls. “Give me the conn…” she said, quietly.

It was her tone, so assured it almost was like a perfect flight path. Skrakt watched his appendage hit the switch that granted control to the co-pilot terminal, and gasped as she pulled the ship around and punched it with a loud whoop into the nebula at full speed.

Almost immediately, the screen shorted out.

“You can’t see!” Skrakt cried out, but Candace only shrugged, her eyes closed except for the occasional glance at her readouts.

“Nothing to see but bright gas, anyway. Now hush…” The ship lurched crazily as she hurtled it through the inferno of death all around them. Scanners indicated that every ship that had tried to follow them was already a slag of radioactive material being pulled into the mass of a new star to be, but Candace flew on, and the longer they went, the smoother it went, with the frightening jerks and bumps becoming almost… smooth.

When the screens went back up, Candace looked almost embarrassed. “The gas had eddys, currents. It was a lot like surfing, back home. Back to base for repairs?”

Skrakt could only stare for a moment before nodding dumbly and watching as this insane creature, supposedly here to learn from HIM, eased the battered ship on it’s way back home.

He didn’t know what surfing was… and he was pretty sure he didn’t ever want to know.