The La'teler Run was an uncommon route for pilots, made difficult only by its comparative length over rural terrain: a nonstop flight to the long dirt road that served as the airfield for the isolated village of La'teler averaged a little over seven hours, and that didn't include the time to pick up or drop off cargo or passengers on the return journey, or getting set up beforehand. Making two journeys to the village in less than forty-eight hours was a test of endurance for even experienced pilots, and no one their right mind had ever considered Sergei Rodovic experienced.
They would be right in all of their assumptions about his capabilities except for one. He was only sixteen years old and had been flying unsupervised in his Winterbach Mag-5 levitation monoplane for just two years. He ran few errands and deliveries in his plane in the past, usually spending no more than four hours at a time up in the sky to help his grandfather's cropdusting business. However, faced with such a challenge as doing the La'teler Run twice in as many days, the young man's determination proved more than a match for the exhausting flight.
It didn't hurt matters that a 10% bonus and the promise of future work from Lord Zayveon hinged on completing his work by sunset on Friday. It also encouraged him to take full advantage of his plane the Sweet Maria's unique vertical takeoff and landing capabilities in a very unconventional way.
Six thousand feet over the old desert outpost of Cadentia the pilot was reviewing a street map of RhyDin, pinned flat off to one side of his instrument panel. He squinted at the main road running near his next destination, the Shambles Clinic. Yesterday he had landed at Westbridge Station, which cost him precious time before he managed to get the first shipment of medical supplies to Riverview Clinic... and time was not on his side, not unless he made this gamble. "Should be wide enough," he said, and touched his headset.
"Sweet Maria five miles south-southeast of the Shambles, angels six thousand, arrival, intend vertical main road east of Shambles, call conflict!" No one called a conflict, but there were calls all the same, mainly to check that they had heard the brazen young pilot of the Sweet Maria correctly the first time.
At an altitude of two hundred feet with the rooftops looming under him and his speed dropping he pulled back the lever on the levitation drive, and the plane began to hover; before it had even landed, as it descended towards the wider road at the edge of the Shambles, he folded back the wings. Traffic on the road came to a dead stop, men and women standing up in their carts and carriages, leaning their heads out of their trucks for a better look as the plane dropped itself down onto a clear space.
The young man didn't stop to explain, and barely sat still long enough to finish powering down his craft. He unloaded the three wooden boxes of medical supplies onto a dolly and wheeled it up to the front door of the Shambles Clinic fully ten minutes before sunset. He was barely inside the door, poking his head in, when he thrust a paper out marked with his time of arrival and said, with an exhausted but cheerful smile
"Medical supplies, shipping number 00215, for Shambles Clinic from Lord Z'ev Zayveon, courtesy of Sky Courier Rodovic! Sign here, please!"
They would be right in all of their assumptions about his capabilities except for one. He was only sixteen years old and had been flying unsupervised in his Winterbach Mag-5 levitation monoplane for just two years. He ran few errands and deliveries in his plane in the past, usually spending no more than four hours at a time up in the sky to help his grandfather's cropdusting business. However, faced with such a challenge as doing the La'teler Run twice in as many days, the young man's determination proved more than a match for the exhausting flight.
It didn't hurt matters that a 10% bonus and the promise of future work from Lord Zayveon hinged on completing his work by sunset on Friday. It also encouraged him to take full advantage of his plane the Sweet Maria's unique vertical takeoff and landing capabilities in a very unconventional way.
Six thousand feet over the old desert outpost of Cadentia the pilot was reviewing a street map of RhyDin, pinned flat off to one side of his instrument panel. He squinted at the main road running near his next destination, the Shambles Clinic. Yesterday he had landed at Westbridge Station, which cost him precious time before he managed to get the first shipment of medical supplies to Riverview Clinic... and time was not on his side, not unless he made this gamble. "Should be wide enough," he said, and touched his headset.
"Sweet Maria five miles south-southeast of the Shambles, angels six thousand, arrival, intend vertical main road east of Shambles, call conflict!" No one called a conflict, but there were calls all the same, mainly to check that they had heard the brazen young pilot of the Sweet Maria correctly the first time.
At an altitude of two hundred feet with the rooftops looming under him and his speed dropping he pulled back the lever on the levitation drive, and the plane began to hover; before it had even landed, as it descended towards the wider road at the edge of the Shambles, he folded back the wings. Traffic on the road came to a dead stop, men and women standing up in their carts and carriages, leaning their heads out of their trucks for a better look as the plane dropped itself down onto a clear space.
The young man didn't stop to explain, and barely sat still long enough to finish powering down his craft. He unloaded the three wooden boxes of medical supplies onto a dolly and wheeled it up to the front door of the Shambles Clinic fully ten minutes before sunset. He was barely inside the door, poking his head in, when he thrust a paper out marked with his time of arrival and said, with an exhausted but cheerful smile
"Medical supplies, shipping number 00215, for Shambles Clinic from Lord Z'ev Zayveon, courtesy of Sky Courier Rodovic! Sign here, please!"