Andromeda's Gates: The story of Yseult Brenneaux

Chapter 11: Charter flight

The M.P.T. Vigo is a Linopeia class passenger transport... it is slow, sluggish and ugly. Yseult thought as she skimmed the specs. She was nearly offended when, following her first mission in which she crash-landed one of the most advanced espionage prototypes MANTIS had, they asked her to run a passenger flight from Freegate in a ferry for her second. In truth though, she was a civilian pilot, used to civilian flying and while the ship was a cow, everything else was her domain... And they needed someone at short notice.

The Vigo normally ran passenger services between Torresta and Jurin II, a routine short-haul service but Octancorp had recently taken control of Freegate and MANTIS had decided to withdraw a number of civilian personnel from operations that it was deemed were too sensitive to try and continue under the encroaching gaze of its rival. While Octan had taken control, this 'fact' was apparently just derived from some economic algorithm that measured corporate activity. Riddaeon had explained it to her in more detail one day while she was recovering but she lost interest incredibly quickly. In reality, Freegate was still a border territory and was still within the operational arm of both Corporations but MANTIS was going to have to decide whether to invest heavily in Freegate and take it back or hope that Octan didn't use it to move on Lesser Drigo and try to cut MANTIS off from the precious mythril. Either way, it wouldn't want valuable personnel hanging around on Freegate and someone, somewhere had decided to extract them. It should be a simple run. It had better be. She thought. With the MANTIS fleet there. The fleet had moved to Freegate as a reaction to the political shift; it all but guaranteed a boring trip. Maybe boring will be good. She pondered after considering her last mission.

She shifted in the pilot's chair and it gave out a disapproving creak. It was uncomfortable but more like her old chair than she'd sat in for a long time. The thought took her back to her ship, the tanned hide couchette that was her seat had moulded and settled itself sweetly against her form after thousands of hours of flying. Every control, every dial, every readout... she could see them in her head, the throttle quadrant on her right; her hand would glance over it to check the lever positions without her even needing to look. For all the bad memories, she could never forsake her girl. Where are you now? She wondered. It hurt to think she was out there, someone else in the pilot seat. It hurt even more at the though of who it might be. You don't deserve her... After what you did to me... "Vigo, this is Ground team". A voice crackling over the A-Com brought her back. "Loading is complete, we're ready to disconnect". The voice continued. Yseult sat up and began the pre-start sequence, taking that bit longer to find each switch and button. "Ground team, this is Vigo..." She replied. "We have internal power and fuel reading. You are clear for disconnect". "Copy that Vigo". The voice replied. A few minutes later, the fuel and power lines that kept the unsightly transport alive on the apron were clear and the ground crew had evacuated the immediate area.

Yseult looked over the engine start checklist and got to work. When she was ready, she contacted the control tower and requested clearance for lift-off. Once granted, she notified the crew and gently eased the power forwards on the control for the antimatter lift engines. The ship began to rise. It would be a slow and dull ascent in an uncomfortable seat. I'll find you. She promised herself... Somehow... I'll find you.