Writing Challenges 2021

Explore: Challenge (5,000 word version)

#WotM @BeyondSol for Jan 2021

Original version below, which proved too long. Old story of "it would have been shorter if I had more time". See next installment for version that fits within the 2,000 word limit required.

"Lost" didn't happen to pilots. Kaz was, therefore, not lost. The prospect was just too embarrassing.

He was exploring.

Exploring felt safer. And purposeful. Something to brag about to his peers when his pilot's instincts clicked in, recognized a pattern in the shifting constellations on the nervecloth lining of his spherical relship, and he knew he would make it home again.

It would have to be a story told only to trusted friends. He entertained himself imagining what his sister, Larette, and their cousins Var and Retatt Lee would think. Would they even believe he'd been out here, off the beaten track, in Killing Reach? Would they guess he'd been looking for the secret jump known only to the ruling family of House Monitum for the last 100 years? At least, people said somebody still knew how to make contact with the self-governing commoners on the other side, so good at destroying themselves it was rumored their ships were destroyed on sight by a multinational agreement of the Fountain Court Oligarchy.

Not that the heads of the Oligarchy shared such directives with teenagers like Kaz who didn't even have a fleet commission. Not yet.

Well, he really should be getting home now, he thought, and took a deep breath.

He adjusted the forward view on his nervecloth to show patches of what lay behind. Then to either side. He got nervous about missing warning signs of dust drifts or random stray interstellar bodies, ahead, and stuck to a simpler display.

The terrible truth was that he didn't recognize anything!

A creeping, scrambling feeling explored his spine, toying with the hope of overwhelming him.

No! He was not lost! He was a highborn of the House of Monitum. The House of Navigators! It couldn't be. It was insane!

But he had never been this far out in Killing Reach. There was nothing to recognize.

His relship could fly on forever, drawing on the energy bound into the structure of the universe. Forever, at least, unless it hit matter. Or he manifest in a cloud of dust between one stitch of relskim and the next, lacerating his body inside and out. He'd heard about pilots blasted into fleshy jam and smeared across the nervecloth lining of their hulls.

There didn't seem to be anything around him, big or small. Not even any nearby stars. But he didn't actually know which routes were safe to travel in. Or where the "bad weather" lay.

Instinctively, Kaz slowed to a single skimfac. The pressure of subjective acceleration on his body lessened. The risk of passing through hazards shrank as well.

But if he went slower, he'd cover less space. And he had to get to somewhere he recognized before it was too late.

He'd already been flying for too long. For hours.

He didn't really know how many hours.

Dimly, he recognized this as a bad sign. He ought to have a powerful, instinctive sense of subjective time, at least. He might be time-slipping already with respect to home, but that was no big deal. His cousin, Retatt Lee, had once time-slipped two whole days! Or had that been his other cousin? And was it one day?

He shook his head.

He blinked.

He took a deep breath and focused his attention on his nervecloth.

What did it matter if he couldn't remember unimportant details? He was flying! He was born to fly and it was glorious. All the nothingness around him couldn't daunt his pilot's soul!

He laughed out loud. In joy.

He swallowed.

He could taste salty sweat. Or maybe the metallic tang of blood. He might be starting to hemorrhage a little at a micro level. He'd been flying for too long.

He had better speed up! He had to get somewhere!

Ah, yes! Going faster felt better. Bracing.

Raz sniffed back a faint trickle of something wet. He released his grip on one control stick in his cockpit seat to dab his nose. The finger came away red.

Just a little rel-fatigue. Nothing he couldn't recover from, later, when his flight was done.

In fact, he felt stronger than ever! Invincible!

He eased back the ship's restraint even more, punching up gap instead of shimmer. Better not to manifest in 3d reality at a higher frequency in order to gain ground, but take bigger leaps between manifestations instead. Less risk of becoming jam when you didn't know the terrain. "The weather." Yes, that's what pilots called it. Weather! As if the majesty of space was anything at all like the dirty, messy, buffeting hysterics of a planetary world's oceans and atmosphere!

Kaz was a part of the universe.

His ship's acceleration knew no limit. Only he held it back, rationing its draw on hidden forces knitting together the nothing that made something. Why not fly harder! Give his ship its reign, like a horse on Monitum, a horse from long lost Earth, galloping across toxic, blue-green grass on an alien, open plain.

The ship resisted. Safety measures.

Why did he need to be safe when he belonged here?

It was beautiful.

He stared into the blur of star-streaks -- distant star-streaks -- on his nervecloth. 

He thought he recognized something. Finally. But he didn't care.

He didn't remember why he should care.

And in his next great gulp of gap ... a moment became infinity.