Fire Sky

Chapter 5 - Imagining the Cruella

Chapter 5 - Imagining The Cruella

When The Cruella came into view of their fighter plane, Atlas felt the homesickness in his heart evaporate as joy filled him instead.

The Cruella was a mighty ship.

She'd been carved from synthetic wood that wouldn't rot in space no matter how many meteor showers they flew through. The generators, hidden below the ship's hold, were state of the art and a force-field generator also kept in a sealed bubble of breathable air and stable gravity for everyone on board.

The controls were all on the main deck where usually three people were needed to make sure everything was coordinated and running smoothly all the time. They were in a sealed room, as golden as most of the fixings on the ship but the room had no roof and a glass walls.

 Below deck, the hold had all their storage as well as the cabins for the crew of almost 30 hooligans and travellers from across the galaxy, which were fully state of the art and maintained at all times.

They weren't that savage.

Large solar panels had been made thin and attached to the ship's three masts. They moved as the ship did in order to catch the sun's rays and help fuel some of the generators. The others generators were all powered by Star Cells.

Star Cells were power cells infused with the same properties that some stars were made from, but could only generate a stable amount of power like them for a month if they were careful. They had enough to last them long enough to make a few more trips from one end of the galaxy to the other, but not quite enough yet to escape more than a few of the ships that were more than likely to chase them.

However, their reserves were slowly depleting and it would almost destroy the ship to take out the generator and put in a newer model.

By then, the ship would have lost the design that made it so unique in comparison to the fleets of ships of today.

The entire design had been something Atlas' grandfather had once seen in his old Earth history books and those tales had him and his son pursuing the dream of having one of those old sea ships and travelling across the stars. Of course, the passion had filled his son and had passed it on to Atlas. But instead of travelling the stars, they'd become mercenaries that delivered things quickly and discreetly.

In a way, they were travelling across the stars. 

He always felt itchy being away from The Cruella; she was his home.

"We're going in. Hold on people!" Lorik called out to everyone on board. Greyson was still asleep in his chair and Aura was leaning against it and watching over Greyson.

Atlas watched with excitement humming through him as the bay doors at the back of the ship opened up and a hatch made for three fighter planes opened up in the back of the ship.

Lorik lowered the plane in gently as Atlas rushed to the door in a hurry to get back on deck.

"Come on, we're there now," Aura's soft voice called behind him.

He unlocked the door and turned to face Greyson and Aura, a relieved grin spreading across his face, "Welcome to The Cruella!"

**

Greyson's eyes were almost falling out of his head, all thoughts of sleep completely evaporating, as he looked around the ship.

It was nothing like he'd ever seen before.

There were people running about all over the ship. Beneath his feet, the wood hummed from the engines in the hull of the ship and from the heavy thundering footsteps of the crew running to their stations.