Fixed Perspective

Even before the Falcon D9 fighter could reach the end of its dispatch tube, Morgan already doubted everything the flight simulator had taught her in training. Every angle seemed more defined, every bump was more severe, and the leveling was much more responsive. Not sensitive, but definitely more responsive. The ride through the tube lasted a total of six seconds, but the narrow tunnel made it seem like ages. She knew that he slightest nudge against the control stick could tilt the wing just enough to clip something and end the training run before it even had a chance to start.

    Somewhere else within that six seconds, part of her training came back to her and actually made sense; the lock function. She lifted her thumb and clipped in a small black button. The light that up to this point had been red now turned a bright green. A small screen that monitored her level beeped, almost in satisfaction, when the Falcon panned out right along a center line and stuck there.
The end of the tunnel was coming closer, but Morgan could only tell this by the red neon lighting that lined the top, bottom and sides of the launch tube. They blinked in a forward motion, and then dropped off at a black end. Morgan thought they looked like the individual strands creating the number on a digital alarm clock.
   Before she could have another thought, the Falcon burst out the side of the base ship with a gasping airish sound of the last oxygen escaping into nothing. Though crowded by the seams of the cabins windows, Morgan couldn’t help but stare at the vastness—as well as the emptiness—of space. It was, after all, her first live training-op. She had moments like these in the past, but they were all in the company of others or very short lived. She never had a moment to take it in for herself and now this was it, even if it lasted just a few seconds. Her eyes instinctively looked past the orbiting space stations, of which there were no more than half a dozen in her view, and into the incredible blanket of stars which shined brilliantly in never the same pattern. She understood now, above all other moments with the stars that they were indeed out of reach. Stars had a way of simultaneously being two feet and two billion light years away, depending on the way she thought about it. Now Morgan never felt so far away from them, and it was that thought alone that made her feel like the smallest and most insignificant spec in reality. 
   If her training had come to her in full, Morgan would have remembered to check for her training pilot on HUD ping navigation system; instead she twisted her head to her right and indeed saw her training pilot exiting his own launch tube. Morgan could see his confidence even in his flight, smooth and flawless. He broke slightly to get closer to Morgan’s D9. When he was good and steady, Captain Flynn looked over and gave a tilt of the head.
   “Not what you thought it would be, right?” Flynn said over the wireless, and Morgan could hear the smile in his tone. She could picture that smile very well, especially the way his scruff seemed to act as definition rather than rugged laziness. She figured it was that smile that made her say yes to the early training-op. Maybe not even the smile, maybe it was him. Captain Flynn and his convincing smile.
   “No, definitely not,” Morgan said, momentarily forgetting which button activated the intercom.    “Simulator didn’t prove anything, I just don’t want to be the next example, you know?” She giggled a little but made sure that her thumb was off the intercom button for it.
   “The simulator is a control hub with a video game plugged into it; I haven’t liked that thing since we installed it. Are you still locked in?” He asked, referring to her levelling function.
“Affirmative. Should I let go?” Morgan glanced at the bright green light.
“No, not yet,” Flynn said almost immediately. “In a few seconds, we’ll go together. You’re going to feel a pull when it happens.”
   “A pull?” Morgan asked, tracing back everything she ever learned about fighter pilot training but not even coming across the word. “From where?”
    A few seconds of silence passed, and with each of them Morgan wondered more and more if she had asked a stupid question. Flynn came to her ear again through a mess of static that calmed down after the first word.
   “When you level, the thrusters are constantly working to make sure you stay in the position you locked up in. So when you unlock, the thrusters stop. Once they do, you’ll feel like you’re being pulled in a direction. Bottom line is to keep moving forward to maintain level.”
Morgan nodded, half-knowing that no one was there to see it. “Unlock then go, roger that.” It was her first time saying something like that, and she smiled when she did.
   “On my mark…” Flynn uttered, “three… two… one… mark.”
Morgan clipped off the level lock and instantly began twisting to the right. If Flynn hadn’t already been slightly in front of her, she probably wouldn’t have noticed against the blackness. She gave the rear thrusters rocket a push, and it reacted like a sensitive gas pedal in a car, pushing her back in her seat with inertia.
   “Well done,” Flynn said as they cruised along together, banking slightly to their right and bringing into view the tail end of their base ship and putting out of view the orbiting space stations, which Morgan could now identify as botanical hubs. “So from here on out, it’s like that video game in the simulator.”
   “I thought you hated the simulator?” Morgan asked. As she looked to her right at Flynn’s D9, she could see the projectile hatches popping open, then sliding out to the side to make room for an over-sized launcher that looked too big to be a turret and too small to be a cannon.
   “I never said different,” he said, “but if you can simplify it down to a point and click interface, you’re sittin’ pretty. Copy that?”
   “Copy that, Captain.”
   “Now get in front of me a little, arm up.” As it came through the intercom, Flynn was already dropping behind Morgan’s field of view, but he wasn’t far off according to her HUV.
    The jitters had passed, mostly. That much she knew. Flynn was behind her and she was able at least momentarily regain some of her composure.
   “I’m going to fire out some drones. They’re going to jet out several clicks, acquire you as a target, and attack. They can’t kill ya but they can bang you up something good. I don’t have turrets on this Falcon, so I can’t help you. And even if I could, I wouldn’t.” He laughed. Morgan smiled. “Avoid, gain advantage, and eliminate, copy that?”
   Standard level 3 training-op, Morgan thought, something you’ve aced a million times… in a video game. She took in a breath, and started feeling the confidence she had in her hands not forty seconds before drip away.
   “Private Taul, do you copy?” Flynn repeated, and Morgan was all there again.
   “Copy. Fire when ready.”
    Without any hesitation or confirmation, Morgan saw Flynn release three drones from both of the oversized launchers, two from the right and one from the left. They popped out with a thunk, and then ignited their own thrusters and sped off into the distance.
Morgan couldn’t have followed them if she tried, they were moving almost four times her speed. She could, however, track them both visually as well as with her HUV, where the three drones appeared as blinking red Xs. She watched as the drones turned and changed direction, blazing their way toward her in a triangle.
   She opened fire. The first few shots were off target by an embarrassingly large margin, but she corrected almost perfectly in the ones that came after and obliterated two of the drones. They halted and exploded in a small flash that was gone almost as soon as it was there.
   The third drone she lost in those flashes, and for a second her heart was still with anticipation and fear, and then resumed its rhythm as Morgan spotted the third drone as it fired at her. The blue beams it shot were weak, that she could tell right away, but they were the equivalent of being hit with a hammer through a phonebook. She rattled in her seat as three streams of blue connected with the aft wing, letting out a scream she tried to stuff back down her throat.
   “You bitch!” She yelled, and somewhere in the back of her mind she thought of what Flynn might say if he heard that.
    Morgan and the drone blazed past each other, and Morgan pulled a huge file out of her training and commanded her D9 into a somersault and boosted her thrusters toward the drone who was now going the same direction as she. She fired as it started making its turn.
    Nothing.
   She looked to aft and saw the turret sparking off shards of light that hurt her eyes. She averted them and was met with a monitor that portrayed her wings as two red flashing problems.
   “Flynn, nothing’s working!” She yelled into the intercom. “Repeat, Flynn, nothing—ah!” Sparks flew on the inside of the cabin, for a split second shrouding her in bright capsules of fire. After the somersault she had decelerated considerably, and was now at relative cruising speed. She shoved the stick forward.  Nothing. She gasped, staring at the drone burrowing toward her. It was going to smash right into her.  This was going to be one of those accidents. She was going to be the next example. Flynn was in a miming panic, motioning something with his hands and mouthing words she couldn’t hear. She couldn’t figure it out, she was frozen. She wouldn’t know what he was saying if he yelled it in her ear.
    The drone was coming, it wasn’t stopping. They weren’t meant to stop, just be stopped. And the only thing that was going to stop it now was the window of her cabin. Then it occurred to her, the pull. She could even see it in Flynn’s silent words. The pull.
    She clipped in the levelling button, felt a jolt of steadiness, then unclipped the button. Her D9 twisted with the pull, but Morgan knew it wasn’t going to be enough, the drone would clip her wing at least.
    And it did.
    The drone bounced off the underside of Morgan’s wing and spun off and away, but the damage was enough to rupture its casing. The drone bled a red blaze and then vanished into a flash.
    Morgan sat there stunned for a few seconds, and then giggled.
  “Nice, Mo, smooth,” she said to herself, and burst out laughing.
    Flynn’s D9 ascended into view. He was giving a thumbs up, which Morgan as delighted to return. He held out his hand as if to ask her to get ready. Morgan watched Flynn’s thrusters push him forward into her, and when their ships intertwined, they moved as one back to the base ship.
   This must be the push, Morgan thought, and thanked Captain Flynn with her best impression of his convincing, safe smile.