Ella rammed her feet into the bike's pedals and stood, whooping for the sheer thrill as she heaved back on the throttle. The speeder veered upward, the view before her of purple forests and blue water giving way to the clear blue sky, filled with the slow moving shapes of the rising hydrobloats.
She howled with wild laughter, the rush of the wind drowning out all sound save the low revs of the bike's engine that pulsed upward through her limbs.
Her eyes, protected by her goggles, scanned the sky and sought for the biggest of the hydrobloats. There! The largest floated a thousand feet above her and a half mile off to her right. She recognised him not just by his immense length, in excess of nine hundred metres, but by the long strands of algae that fell from his back, the last year's crop.
"Old Moss! I'm going to tickle your beard!"
She sped toward the giant herbivore, her stomach pitching and twisting as she ascended at a near vertical rate, the bike protesting as she pushed it beyond the limits of its design.
A shudder ran through its length. The engine spluttered.
Ella giggled at the danger. She crouched on the bike, leaned forward, and rammed her heels into the pedals. This was freedom!
The speeder jolted forward. Old Moss filled her vision. She levelled the bike off, felt it drop, and angled the nose higher. These bikes weren't meant for flying so high up: keeping them level would only lose height at such altitude.
Still, she was closing on Old Moss now. A low groan that echoed from the nearest of the animals, so low that Ella felt it rather than heard it, told her that the herd had taken note of her presence.
She felt the eyes of the hydrobloats fall on her. Suddenly, without warning, Old Moss let out a great groan that Ella recognised as a warning to the herd members. With a swish of their tails, and a great gulp of air to redistribute the stores of hydrogen gas in their numerous bladders, the herd angled up and gained height faster than before.
Her bike cut along below the bull of the herd. The hydrobloats were use to humans on their numerous vehicles. They even allowed the wardens to harvest the algae off their backs when it became too heavy for them to float upward.
No. If it wasn't her that they were afraid of, then that must mean it was something else.
She looked to her left and then her right. The sudden boom of alarm that Old Moss emitted from deep inside his immense lungs was answered by the heard. Dozens of them responded with higher pitched bellows.
Was there a warden nearby, spooking them? Or was it–
Ella jerked her bike sharply to the right without thought.
As she tilted dangerously a winged shape sped past her left side with a shriek. Ella caught a glimpse of a bright blue thorax and a bulging yellow abdomen as the winged creature sailed by, a talon outstretched to grab her only missing her by a hand's width.
If she hadn't moved!
The young woman felt panic rise inside of her. The thought of her being carried off the saddle of her bike into free fall, held in the talons of a skarn, knocked her confidence.
But that's what had unnerved the herd. A skarn. Possibly a whole swarm of them, perhaps numbering in the hundreds.
What a time for her sensors to be offline! That was something she'd one day repay the Empire for.
She unlocked the safety on her bike's herding cannon and checked they were fully charged. Then she turned back to her right and dived in pursuit of the skarn that had so nearly unseated her.
Ella was angry. And when she got angry, other things tended to get damaged.
And she enjoyed it.
She sighted the skarn manually between the twin sights of the bike's cannon. Having no sensor aid to aim, it would be a challenge to hit the creature with such a weapon.
Still, it was a challenge she relished. The four narrow wings of the skarn fell in between the sights. The creature turned its head back toward her and let out a cry that sounded like mocking laughter from inside a hollow helm. It drew its legs up to its abdomen and Ella knew it was planning to dive again.
She predicted the movement, grinned, and fired.
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And with this chapter we get the chance to meet Ella! Impetuous, risk-loving, and always trying to annoy her teachers, she is a direct opposite to the more sober Tayre. Setting the introduction amid an 'action scene' gets us to test and witness their virtues more quickly - it forces them to act and we get to see and experience them in a rawer fashion.