The sea was unusually calm for a launch.
Hoshizora Kaito stood at the edge of a coral cliff, under him, the scrappy frame of his spaceship he named Starglider, jutted out from a natural cove like a hermit crab refusing to move out of its too-small shell.
The Starglider was a clunker. Four patched-up stabilizer fins, one half-buried fusion core that coughed like an old man with sailor lung, and a hull plated with scavenged ship doors and atleast one piece of a vending machine. But it flew. Technically.
"Alright, sky," Kaito muttered, tilting his head upward, "Be kind."
He stepped back from the cliff's edge, inhaled deeply, and broke into a sprint.
"Three, two, one!"
He leapt.
Kaito plummeted. Wind tore through his hoodie. The waves below rushed up to greet him like old friends, but before they could wrap him in a salty embrace, he suddenly stopped for a short second in mid-air and the ship's rear cargo bay snapped open, catching him with a satisfying clunk.
"NAILED IT!" Kaito shouted, already climbing into the cockpit.
He plopped into the pilot's seat and cracked his knuckles.
"Final check, copilot," he said, glancing at a small plush crab sewn to the controls. "Fuel cells?"
Silence.
"Yup, probably enough. Engined primed?"
More silence.
"I'll take that as a yes!"
He punched the ignition.
The ship shuddered, whined, then lurched forward like a drunked beetle on a trampoline. A geyser of mist blasted from the aft vents, sending sea spray high into the sky as the vessel wobbled upward through Mizumori's cloud-ringed atmosphere.
Kaito whooped.
"WE'RE FLYING!!! WE'RE ACTUALLY FLYI—ohwaitno—WHOA!"
The ship tilted violently to the left. A warning glyph flashed red on the screen:
[STABILIZER 2 OFFLINE]
He yanked the stick back. The starglider bucked, twisted then righted itself with a metallic groan.
The clouds parted above. A thousand stars blinked in greeting.
The clouds parted above. A thousand stars blinked in greeting.
Kaito stared for a moment and marveled. All that black velvet and silver dust. Thousand of stars surrounded him.
A slow grin spread across his face.
Then his stomached growled.
"….I forgot food."
—
Half a day later, the Starglider exited local space and skipped across a nebula filament like a stone over rippling water. The gravity sensors spasmed. One screen sparked. Kaito slapped it.
"No exploding until I find a place to land, alright?!"
The navigation computer beeped blissfully still functional. It projected a small hologram: a nearby planet, ringed in thick orange clouds, named BASALT - 9.
"First stop Basalt - 9 planet," Kaito said, squinting at the screen. "There might have delicious food there."
The ship's fuel gauge ticked downward ominously.
"No pressure."
He adjusted the ship's heading. The stars curved. As he approached the planet, the ship entered the upper atmosphere, jostled hard, and flared bright in a comet tail of friction heat.
"Alright," Kaito whispered to the controls, "Just hold together for landing—"
BOOM!
Something detached. A piece of the exterior plating spiraled off into the clouds.
"YUP, TOTALLY FINE," he shouted over the alarm klaxons. "JUST A LITTLE ATMOSPHERIC DRAMA!"
The starglider plummeted.
"PLANET LANDING, INITIATEEE!"
CRASHH!
When the smoke cleared, the Starglider lay half-buried in red sand, its noss embedded in what looked like a fossilized canyon. The sky overhead was orange, bruised with storm clouds, and lightning stitched through the upper clouds like angry threads.
Kaito coughed, kicked open the side hatch, and rolled out onto the sand, laughing.
"Perfect landing," he wheezed, face-down. "A ten out of ten."
Above him an alien the size of a truck watched him with four glowing eyes, unimpressed.
Kaito blinked.
"…you friendly?"
The creature roared.
Kaito grinned wider.
"I'll take that as a maybe!"