(Tarrasin)

“Any pain?”

Ingrid shook her head. “Everything is fine. You don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do. You know how they get,” the doctor shrugged. “Lean back. I’ll be quick.”

Ingrid did so, biting her tongue. The doctor was right that Cadrune could get obsessive about her health. She knew that wasn’t without good reason, but it was a nag. There were things she could be doing with her time. People to help out, debts to repay.

She had so many of those, but ultimately her largest one was to Cadrune themselves. And the old Vorak fretted endlessly each and every time she so much as scraped her arm.

Despite protests about lack of expertise and knowledge, the doctor had been called out to the property dozens of times, all at the behest of Ingrid’s…

Mmm. The proper word to describe her relationship with Cadrune still eluded her. Host? Patron? Benefactor? Perhaps that last one landed closest, but it still missed something essential to the relationship.

If only she could put her finger on exactly what that something was.

The doctor was their usual curt self. The first few visits had been wracked with nervous checking and double checking. But after so many visits the routine had become bland.

Ingrid had given up trying to understand the different scanning machines the Vorak used. Some of them resembled MRIs or CT machines in shape, but did completely different things. Trying to learn the function of each machine and test had been more promising than getting a Vorak to explain the mechanisms of how it happened, but in the end it was all over her head.

Bone test. Easy.

Electro-stimulus-something test. Tingly.

Heart imaging. She tried not to shiver.

Back in the States, she’d gotten all too used to the feeling of cold medical instruments on her skin. But life after being abducted forced her to reimagine just what kind of discomfort she was ready to adapt to.

Certain embarrassments just didn’t land the same way in alien company. Shirtless for an echocardiogram on Earth? Uncomfortable at best, and potentially mortifying.

But the Vorak had completely different preconceptions about clothing and nudity. Them not caring made it a lot easier for Ingrid to do the same. Then again…she might have liked to agonize over nothings like that.

The alternative was agonizing over the medicine itself and…

No. No good came from following that line of thinking.

All she could do is lie back and trust the doctor to do their work as quickly as possible, as always.

Thankfully, Vorak professionalism included a certain laconic streak. Chatty doctors were the worst, and Ingrid was always one to count her blessings.

She had a surprising number of those on the Vorak planet. One stood out more than the rest, and she had it to look forward to as soon as these medical tests were through.

One hour stretched into two. Two into three. But she wasn’t worried. As insistent as Cadrune was about her medical visits, they were even more committed to their word.

Her first flight had already been delayed once before on account of storms, and Cadrune had promised to carve out air time for her today.

It couldn’t come quickly enough.

Come on…

Why weren’t alien imaging studies any faster than the ones on Earth?

Come onnnn…

“…Okay. That’s the last one,” the doctor said. “Everything looks good. Still.”

“Any new features to the lecture?” Ingrid asked, pulling sensor stickers off her chest.

“No. Just the usual. Keep stressful activity to a minimum. Try to keep your heartrate down—just in case.”

“Understood,” she nodded. “Have a good day then.”

“Thank you,” the doctor said. Cadrune would want them to stick around no doubt. That meant Ingrid didn’t need to feel bad leaving them in her dust.

She at least didn’t run. Besides being rude, she at least wanted to pretend that she would follow the doctor’s advice. No need to get her heart racing.

But she did speedwalk about as rigorously as possible out of Cadrune’s estate down the stone path connecting it to the adjacent airfield.

The airfield itself was technically part of a small public airport that mostly served as a stopover for flights headed from the mainland further up the coast, but Cadrune’s estate was adjacent to the smaller, perpendicular runway that was mostly for local hobbyists.

Ingrid guessed when your donation paid for half the airport’s expansion, they let you have a footpath going right to the private hangars.

She would have thought living next to an airport would come with terrible noise, but Cadrune could afford to keep their estate under a specialized air barrier. It was apparently setup to agitate the air in such a way to dissipate sound waves that tried to cross it.

Ingrid had never really noticed the screams of any airplane engines when she slept, so it must work. Walking through the barrier on the other hand felt like a suction cup was oh-so-faintly pulling on your skin.

She was waved through the gate with barely a glance. Her human face was better than any credentials.

Her flight instructor was waiting for her, looking a mite cross.

“Sorry I’m late, boss,” Ingrid apologized.

“Don’t call me boss. I’m not your boss. I’m an instructor,” Doke frowned. “Why do you call me that?”

“What? I never said?” Ingrid asked. “It’s a cognate. [Boss] in English means pretty much the same thing as ‘bos’ in Tarassin.”

They snorted.

“Really? What are the odds of that?”

“Above zero,” Ingrid shrugged. “Sorry I was late though. Medical stuff—”

“Yeah, yeah, Harpe Cadrune called the desk. But you’re here now. So, are you ready?”

“Yes.”

She answered firmly and with all the confidence she was feeling.

She’d been practicing for months. She’d taken all the tests. She’d even jury-rigged a psionic simulator to really prepare for every last detail.

“Then show me. You’re singing lead,” Doke said, pulling a clipboard off the wall. “I won’t say anything unless you’re going to kill us.”

Really, she’d only be killing Doke, but that was motivation enough.

Without another word, Ingrid went into the hangar and began going through her checklist.

First? Mise en place.

The ultra-light plane had minimal cargo space, so virtually nothing was guaranteed to be packed beforehand that wasn’t built into the fuselage itself.

Headset. Radio unit. Emergency kit. Parachutes. Operations manual.

The truth of the matter was that other people might have flown the plane recently, and some of the equipment might still be on board. But protocol was to assemble everything you might need, just to make sure.

If something was already loaded, then it was almost always better to trust the equipment you’d checked personally.

The heavy book of procedures wasn’t a very practical thing to bring on board, especially considering Ingrid had a completely psionic copy in her mind that she could navigate dozens of times faster than a paper version…but psionics were not technically recognized by local aviation law. The operations manual wasn’t strictly necessary for a real pilot either, but then Ingrid wasn’t a real pilot.

Yet.

This was her first time flying without Doke holding her hand. Even if they were riding along, she was doing it all herself. One by one, she loaded up the plane with the gear, ignoring all the critical ‘tsk’ s and ‘hrm’ s from Doke and their clipboard.

She was ultimately just going down a psionic checklist, but it was a good thing she’d been so exhaustive making it. More than a few items were misplaced—on purpose no doubt. You were supposed to check the emergency crash kit and its contents before takeoff, and more than a few items were missing from the first two duffels she pulled from the lockers.

“No water desalinator or sun foils? I’m almost insulted, boss,” Ingrid said, while she replaced the missing items.

Doke said nothing, simply marking off another field on the clipboard.

Ingrid strapped all the emergency gear into the hatches and double confirmed the buoyancy releases were ready. If the plane went down in the water and sunk somehow, it was key that all the emergency preparations didn’t sink with it.

Water soluble fasteners held the exterior cargo hatches, and if the plane went below the water for more than a minute, they’d pop open and the gear would float.

Ingrid knew that wouldn’t be possible without Adeptry. Earth probably had strong durable materials that could dissolve in water, but they probably weren’t cheap.

Adeptry changed a lot of that math.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

There were a lot of corners she could cut with her own Adeptry, but she willfully didn’t. You didn’t cut corners on certification. This was the kind of activity she’d missed in the hospital back on Earth. Accomplishments worth pursuing just weren’t possible when you weren’t sure if you were going to live more than a few weeks.

Of course now she was sure.

‘Something to brag about for the rest of your life’. Ingrid’s father had said that in the hospital. About what?

She couldn’t quite remember now, but the phrase came to mind nonetheless.

Put it out of your mind for now, she chided herself. The certification had barely begun.

Ingrid climbed into the cockpit chair, pulling the pilot’s hatch closed behind her. Doke went to climb in the passenger hatch, but Ingrid pointed threateningly at him.

“Hey! Back off, mud-toes,” she said. “This bird isn’t cleared yet…”

She still had things to tick off her list before any non-pilot personnel could board. Doke had tried to catch her slacking by boarding early.

They ticked off another box.

Once she was in the chair, the going got even smoother. Her psionic simulator was based around sitting in the pilot’s chair—so she could practice just sitting in a chair in Cadrune’s estate.

How many times had she literally gone through the motions?

Buckle-in. Check the radio connections. Confirm signal strength. Headset firmly on head, radio firmly mounted to console. Check gauges…check hydraulic responses…confirm fuel…confirm fuel again…dot your ‘i’s and cross your ‘t’s!

She was so ready.

Only once she’d done all but turn over the prop’s ignition did she pop the passenger hatch and beckon Doke.

“Coast-aircraft 2294, awaiting one passenger?” she said in her most innocent voice.

Even the alien Doke could recognize human sarcasm that thick.

They rolled their eyes, but climbed aboard without a word.

“Buckle-in,” Ingrid ‘instructed’. “Put the pieces together until you hear two clicks. Not one, not three, two.”

This was not her first time having to give these instructions. One of the earliest things Doke had tested her on was passenger safety. Nothing forced you to pay attention like being responsible for the life of a blithering idiot.

Being responsible for someone merely acting so was only marginally better.

Satisfied that Doke was strapped in properly, Ingrid rudely—and pointedly—reached across their lap and pulled the passenger hatch shut.

Doke had warned her multiple times about safety: never just take someone’s word.

She didn’t wait for any approval from her instructor, even now. Like they’d said, she was leading the song.

Firing up the engine, Ingrid left it to warm up while she completed her radio check-ins.

“Coast 2294, calling in from ground,” she said. “Scopes, what’s the runway schedule look like? Soonest clearance, please.”

“Please?” the rak running the local scopes scoffed. “Is that Doke’s bird? We heard you on the radio last week—”

Her instructor actually spoke up.

“Shape up, and do your blistering jobs,” they snapped. “This is a certification. Protocol. No ‘please’ about it.”

“…Runway west is clear for the next forty minutes,” the tower called back. Sheepishly.

Well, technically the Vorak didn’t call the air-controller ‘tower’. They liked to remind people how much they should trust instruments. Hence ‘scopes’.

But it was totally the tower.

Ingrid had lived within spitting distance of Ramstein Airbase for years before all this. ‘The tower’ was too deeply ingrained in her lexicon.

But she’d practiced her ass off. She wasn’t about to use the Earth air-traffic convention by mistake.

“Scopes, wind check?” Ingrid asked. “Confirm east headwind for takeoff. Speed?”

“Confirmed. East headwind. Category one speed. Tack on just a bit of extra throttle and you’ll be fine.”

“Taxiing for the runway,” Ingrid announced on the open frequency. “Scopes, Coast 2294, clear me for takeoff, please.”

“Confirmed, you are cleared,” the tower said. “…But only because you asked so nicely.”

“Thank you.” Ingrid asked.

Soon. So soon now…

the same voice from the radio replied.

Doke warned.

Ingrid chuckled.

“Coast 2294, taking off,” Ingrid said, tempted to blow Doke some raspberries.

She throttled the plane forward, adding just a hair extra throttle to compensate for the headwind, just like advised. The trees whirled by in a blur of green white and yellow as they picked up speed.

Any second now…

Ingrid’s eyes stayed firmly on the horizon. She could only spare a fraction of a second to glance at her airspeed instruments.

Truthfully, she probably stayed on the ground a few seconds too many waiting to get up to speed—extra wear on the wheels it would be called.

Once she was absolutely certain they were going fast enough, she pulled up gently on the plane’s stick.

Liftoff.

She’d felt wind beneath her wings before, but it had always been with Doke or another instructor talking her through the steps. This time, her hands were the only ones on the controls.

In seconds they were hundreds of feet into the air and climbing. She gave the joystick an easy turn and banked south. The island, the city, and the greenery spread out to their left, and the glittering blue Voraki ocean spread out to their right.

Was there anything she loved more in the world than the sights from a pilot’s seat?

It almost made getting abducted worth it.

·····

Three hours later she was back on the ground, and her knuckles weren’t so white anymore now that she wasn’t panicking her way through a landing.

She took the footpath back up to Cadrune’s estate, being sure to walk slowly. That landing had definitely seen her heart racing faster than doctor’s orders.

But her day wasn’t over yet. Ingrid strode in through the estate’s front door, seeing the only Vorak she felt close enough to to use gendered pronouns.

“Welcome back, [ma’am]. How was your flight?” Gomi asked, staring Ingrid right in the eye.

Ingrid returned the servant’s stare ruefully, but Gomi didn’t flinch. She had to steel her face. Show no weakness.

It was bad form.

Gomi broke first. Specifically, into a grin.

“Ahaha…you should see your expression.”

“I should never have taught you any English,” Ingrid grumbled. “[Ma’am]… good grief. Call me that again and I’m going to tell that deli clerk you had a crush on them.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” squeaked Gomi. “That was shared with you in the strictest of confidences.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Ingrid smiled. “Just don’t be so formal. It’ll drive me crazy.”

“I make no promises,” Gomi said sagely. “But first tell me how your flight went!”

“[Awesome],” Ingrid gushed. “Well, technically we had to come back early since a storm started blowing in. But I completely aced the pre-flight tests, and I even got Harpe Doke to look at my psionic simulator. I can’t believe it, but you were right; I think I’m getting my license first try.”

“How’s that feel? The first human in Vorak history to get a flight certification,” Gomi smiled. “Your name’s going to be in a book, probably.”

“Shut up,” Ingrid grinned awkwardly. “Let’s get to work. Any more talk about anything ‘first human’ so-and-so is going to make my ego swell. What’s first for today?”

“Dusting,” Gomi said. “Magic us up the good tools?”

Ingrid grinned.

She did love helping out.

Maybe it was silly to have spent two whole weeks refining different household tools, but it had been such good fun tinkering with even the smallest particulars of a duster. Adept experimentation had yielded a fuzzy tool so prone to static that it could practically suck dust off surfaces like a vacuum.

Ingrid materialized one for each of them.

Using her psionics, Gomi wordlessly pointed out the most convenient order to dust each room in, with Ingrid diligently following along.

They were old hands at this by now. Psionics made coordinating their work almost effortless, while they got to chat aloud.

“Did you get to do any fun maneuvers?” Gomi asked.

“Nah, I’m not there yet. Just big sweeping turns and some not-so-steep dives.”

“Rak were never meant to fly, I’m telling you,” Gomi said. “…I bet they felt pretty steep.”

“That they did,” Ingrid said. “What about your morning? Anything worth sharing from classes?”

“I’m still working on my next thesis draft, so you don’t get to see it yet—actually, you know how we’ve got that replacement professor? They give all their notes in Starspeak, and you know it better than I do. Think I could bother you to help me translate them tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Ingrid smiled.

The two of them carried on like that through for most of the afternoon, and Ingrid thought it might just have been the perfect day—discounting the morning’s medical scare, at least.

Cadrune’s estate was practically a resort. Assisting the staff helped her feel like she was contributing, though Cadrune insisted she’d more than paid for her room and board with the psionics she’d shared.

When the sun finally set, Ingrid gave Gomi a hug goodbye and withdrew to the guest room she’d been living in for the past two years. She burned the rest of her evening reading a Vorak book about a prisoner facing execution.

It was a bit dark, but she couldn’t help but identify with her own drastically different yet parallel experience.

She wasn’t on death row. She might have been abducted, diverted, and thrown onto this planet against her will, but looking around now? Where she was staying? What she got to do every day? Who she got to do it with?

It was just about paradise.

This wasn’t the first time recently she’d felt like it was such a perfect day. So many of her days were nothing short of idyllic, it made her squirm.

She knew it couldn’t last.

She might not be on death row, but she knew she only had so many days left.

Who could say how many for sure?