Excerpt: Perihelion

I swung through the fanciful iris hatchway and dropped neatly into the drivers’ seat. Consoles and touchscreens and wire-beribboned power stations stacked up around the sides, fair glowing with potential. The front viewscreen was flawless. I tapped it, half-expecting it to ring like crystal.
Glancing at the magnifier/picture modifier, I saw that it was a latest model- a tiny dent in the ceiling with what looked like an angled sprinkler nestled in it. This was going to be good.
More screens lit up. Sixen appeared in the viewscreen with a grin, then waved and signaled that they were going to leave the bay.
The back airlock door thunked down. The ship wobbled a little as the atmosphere dissipated slowly around it. Then the snaggletooth parting of the front airlock began to separate with a whispering hiss.
One hand brushed the controls; the shuttle rose so smoothly I could believe it was a simulation, and then the ship dropped away.
Space blinded me with its emptiness for a moment- the blackness studded with the lights of a thousand million stars, like eyes. For some reason, it had never looked so daunting.
Then the artificial gravitational field snapped in; then the feeling of power rose. The controls were as smooth as the exit.
Suddenly exhilarated, I turned the shuttle in a wide arc. Things thumped in the gyroscopes and the engine, and the view slanted wildly. Then I accelerated and space blurred and it really got fun. The atmosphere flipped past in a stunning stream of light, and Mathaimor stretched before me, all milky sea and green land, drifting clouds and danger.
I engaged the orbit engines and slanted down and then I was sailing out over the unmapped land- the green of forests tiny and weightless, the ranges of needle-tipped mountains harmless and trite, the swathes of reflective sea nothing, nothing compared to the majesty of this magnificent ship.
I pulled the throttle on impulse and the ship lashed down towards the sea.
Waterspouts and geysers shunted it sideways and up, but I wove around them in a ridiculous 360 sideways turn, the right fin of the ship sketching lines on the hot water. Air whistled past, an interesting novelty after months of space: outside sound. I never realised how much I missed being able to hear the world.
The shuttle shot upwards; vertical, its engines giving rise to great plumes of steam as force pushed off the surface of the water. Bringing it around, I jammed the throttle again and reached speeds usually unattainable on-planet. Mathaimor swung wildly around the ship.
I circled the planet three times in a whirl and then shot up into the sky. The atmosphere broke over me and the ship bucked once, then burst out into silent space.
There I reached speeds that perhaps should not be reached, even off-planet. The mysterious Anberen technology did not so much as whine as it plotted recalculated course after recalculated course in an ever-accelerating blur.
Then I spun in frictionless speed and careened off, the navigation console flickering like a rave party. The ship spun round and round and then I plunged back towards Mathaimor again. The ship floated like a seagull across a ring of updrafts and then drifted away into the sky again.