Chapter 3

                                                                    Gerda

My breathing calmed down as we made our way through the ship. I was right, it was designed for idiots with too much money and too few brain cells, but it was only as we ventured into the cockpit that I realised exactly how rich her family was. The panels lining the walls were made from real wood, and I was sure the leather used for the seats really came from some exotic reptile rather than a cloned substitute. The Equal Opportunity Act may have forced us into the same school, but for the first time, I realised she belonged to a world I had only ever seen on the holoscreen. Not that I cared, but still...

Why did she want to run from all of this? I didn’t think her family was that nice, and I knew she was adopted, but why the rush to try to find her mum now? One more year and she would be free to do as she pleased. It’s not like she would be stuck with them because she was lacking money.

But it was none of my business why she decided to run off now, and we weren’t friends, so I didn’t ask. She got us a ship, and I would fly it. That was all there was to the deal. In a few weeks, I would be far away from this shithole with enough platinum bars in my pocket to give me a fair start, and she... Again, it wasn’t my business what she would do.

I shrugged and sank down into the pilot seat. It was surprisingly soft and comfy. Nothing like those hard, functional seats on Avicenna that I remembered from our tour last year. The Navy wasn’t known for comfort and luxury, another reason to have gotten away from there as soon as I could.

I brought the systems online, but everything looked so different from what I was used to, so it took me a while to figure out how to do it. It would be fine. Once we were up and running, it was all automatic. No one sane expected people who were stupid enough to waste money on an interstellar yacht to have the brain capacity required to fly it, right?

                                                                        Kaya

My heart was pounding as I watched Gerda fiddle with the console, and the realisation of what we were about to do dawned on me. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea in the end. We still had a chance to go back. Maybe… I glanced at her, but she ignored my distress and only looked at the holoscreens filling up with an endless stream of data.

At least she knew what she was doing. It would be okay, I tried to tell myself as I sat on the armrest of the other seat and fiddled with my bag. I suddenly regretted not taking my collection of porcelain cats with me. I had collected them for as long as I could remember, and they would be lonely without me, and I dreaded to think what would happen to them when I was gone.

“G-Gerda..”

“Log in with your card and give A-level access to the console,” she said without even looking at me.

"Gerda..." I sniffled.

“What?"

She turned to me but didn’t let me answer and just said,

“Do you want to go and find your mum or not?”

It wasn’t fair, but I knew she was right. I didn’t want to go back, not really, even though the journey scared me. At least I wasn’t alone, I told myself. I sat down and inserted the card into the reader.

The cold leather seat stuck to my back, and I could feel another panic attack rising at the unpleasant sensation, but I forced myself to shut down my feelings and focus on the task. After a few attempts, I managed to enter Father's data into the computer. I had a good memory, so I still remembered his credentials from the time he sent me an email for my birthday with permission to buy any gift I wanted. Back then, I had considered it pointless, I had enough money to buy whatever ice cream I wanted. But it came in handy now.

At least Gerda seemed happy with the results.

“I will submit our flight plan, and we are ready to go.”

So quickly… I glanced at her.

“C-can’t we…”

                                                                     Gerda

I smiled when traffic control approved our flight plan. Of course, it was all automatic. People had other things to do than to question the whereabouts of a ship like this in person. I smiled and leaned back as the ship’s engines came to life, filling the cockpit with a subtle vibration. Almost there…

I closed my eyes and, for the first time, let my imagination carry me into a future that neither sucked nor had the Bitch in it when a quiet chime rang in the cockpit, forcing me to look at the instruments.

Submit a valid pilot licence? What the fuck? Why couldn’t she do the simplest thing right? I glanced at her with a frown.

“Just enter it. What are you waiting for?”

"B-but..."

She looked at me, and her smile almost drove me insane.

“Just do it!”

“B-but…F-father doesn’t have one…"

“What?”

“H-he always hired a pilot," she mumbled.

Fuck, how had I missed that? I stared at the console. The flight plan was still approved, it seemed like. Wasn't flying a ship without a licence just like driving a car without one? What could they do? Fine us? Who cared… We shouldn’t have taken this ship to begin with anyway.

I shrugged and initiated automatic takeoff.

                                                                       Kaya

I screamed and covered my ears when several alarms went off, and the ship suddenly jolted forward, making me stumble from my seat and land hard on the floor.

For a moment, the cockpit went black, and I felt myself lift off the ground, only to crash back as the light once again lit up the cockpit, and the sudden acceleration squeezed my stomach. I shut my eyes. I shouldn’t have left home. No matter how bad it was, it was nothing compared to this, and I knew our journey had just begun.