parentshiftbook Chapter 409 How to fly a hovercraft
Chapter 409 How to fly a hovercraft
"Keep it steady, steady... steady..."
The voice of the maglev's pilot drilled deep into my brain, like a mantra a monk would repeat to fall into a state of deep meditation.
"Steady... steady... steady..."
Keeping my hands on each of the two autonomous control sticks, I continued to bring them closer and closer to the natural position.
Despite a huge panel of grass going right across the middle of the hovercraft's cockpit, not a single bit of natural light reached my eyes, fully replaced by the intricate displays of both the world outside and thousands upon thousands of all sorts of various parameters.
"Steady... steady... steady..."
I couldn't care less about how the world looked like within the camera feeds. Discover exclusive tales on empire
The images were too distracting, the perspective too falsified. And, given how much of a crash course my current lesson was, the maglev's original pilot had no other choice but to teach me by abusing all kinds of shortcuts to steering the craft he developed in the long years of his service.
"Steady... just like that... Good," finally, the pilot's words finally changed from the former, boring mantra to something more concrete. "Now, let go of the planar stick and slowly throttle the power."
Following the order, I brought my right hand up from the stick and towards a massive lever sticking out from the very middle of the vehicle's cockpit.
With my eyes ignoring all the imagery of the camera feed and focused on just three lines of slowly changing numbers, I grabbed the leaver and slowly, steadily pulled it down.
I had no idea what kind of esoteric principle of magnetism allowed this craft to fly. It was science so far removed from the degree of my understanding it could very well be magic... If not for how I actually understood quite a bit about the magic of this world, while having no clue about the principles that made this hovercraft... well, hover.
Still, as I decreased the power fed into the powerful magnets located at both the bottom and the top of the vehicle, I could feel the inertia causing my guts to revolt a little.
The primal panic of suddenly finding myself falling made me clench my ass. If not for the power of my will imposing upon the muscles of my arm, I would crash the extremely expensive vehicle right here and now.
"Now, bring it to a stall..." The pilot continued to feed me simple instructions while alternating his eyes from my hands on the controls to the very same strings of numbers and letters displayed on the massive glass panel of the craft.
I pulled my right even further down, all the way to the point where the leaver refused to move any further.
That... I could perfectly sympathize with it.
Without the usual sense of overwhelming power of abused physics going against the scale of its principles, humans were accustomed to, without powerful engines pushing the craft ahead or extremely-fast spinning rotor forcing the heavy chopper into the skies by pushing the air so far it could balance out the weight it had to lift...
The feeling was just as the pilot said - addicting. Rather than trying to bend the laws of nature to one's own will, I simply aligned and unified with it instead.
'It's like I've used a sail and drove the winds for the first time after years of only ever trying to swim by rapidly kicking the water with my legs.'
My teacher's words allowed me to finally find a proper word to describe this strange feeling that resonated throughout my soul. And for that alone, I bowed my head to him again.
"Well, it won't do you any good to try to go through with it right now," the pilot mentioned only to turn the black of his visor towards the still active camera feeds and even point out at the figure that approached quite close to the landing zone.
'She's back already?'
As great of a feeling as it was to control this pinnacle of scientific engineering, seeing Fay appear on the display was just the right thing I needed to get my priorities back in order.
"I will see you later in the evening then," I quickly said my farewells before setting my seatbelt loose and dashing out of the steering chair only to rush out of the hovercraft the very second the pilot pulled one of the levers and lowered the entry ramp down.
"How did it go?"
I ran out only to grab Fay right into my arms and look her right in the eyes while trying to stifle the sense of overwhelming worry within my heart.
Sure, out of worry I would rather have her stay behind... But at the same time, I couldn't even bear the thought of leaving for a mission without her.
After all, it would mean staying on one with Claudy for another week... Or rather, wasting a week of my life without her by my side!
"It's all okay, the kid is growing nicely..." Fay attempted to reply, only for my body to move on its own as I pushed my arms further and then brought her into a tight embrace.
"Silly... Our kid is one thing and I certainly want to know how it is, but more importantly..." Forcing myself, I pushed myself out of the hug and looked right into Fay's face again. "How is your health?"
Fay's face twitched... but ultimately, she only ended up smiling as she took the initiative and pushed herself back into my arms.
"I'm okay," she reassured me while her hands caressed my back. "And as long as I keep drinking nourishing tonics and keep eating vitamin pills on a regular basis, there's nothing wrong with me tagging along!"