Got my shipment loaded for Argus and took off from Dagran at 03:20 AS time. The outbound flight path carried me over the pearl islands, and so named because that’s exactly what they look like from the air, a slightly oblong string of jewels against the dark blue ocean, all that remains of a super volcano in our ancient past. I will miss my home here, but I confess it was a thrill blasting up through the atmosphere on what is likely to be an adventurous new chapter in my life. Radical change is as good a medicine for grief as I am likely to find for the time being. I am grateful that my parents enrolled me in pilot school when I was young.
Argus is a five-day trip, two days to the regional wormhole and another two days on the other side of it. With the warp rings deployed, my little ship looks like a hoop-glider, though it has a rather dull gray solid core rather than the iridescent translucent filament between the rings that the glider fish has. They are quite beautiful, though rarely seen, one of my favorite sea creatures.
Surinia, Argus’ sun, is falling rapidly behind me, and I can no longer see Dagran itself. The Gia One moon colony and its parent planet of Madra are on the opposite side of the sun at this time of year, so ahead of me is one last planet, Fiesten, an uninhabitable, moonless, gas giant before I exit the solar system.
Marlon Tave, Captain
