A portion of the ceiling collapsed in a shower of rock and dust. I disengaged the light-lance, looking up through the hole. There was no skylight nearby, so above was a dark uniform greyness. The sky.

“Can your hologram create a projection of a new roof?” I asked M-Bot.

“Yes, but it will be less secure,” he said. “Sonar imaging can see through the hologram. But… It feels like so long since I’ve seen the sky.” He seemed wistful, though he would probably claim that was some kind of programming quirk.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Come on. Let’s fly!”

“I…,” M-Bot said softly. “Yes, all right. Let’s go! I do want to fly again. Just be careful, and keep me out of sight.”

I raised us up through the hole, then waved to Rig, who was standing with our things a short distance away.

“Engaging stealth mechanisms,” M-Bot said. “We should now be invisible to DDF sensors.”

I grinned. I was in the sky. With my own ship. I slammed the throttle forward.

We stayed in place.

Right. No booster.

I engaged the maneuvering thrusters, which were intended more for fine-tuned positioning than they were for actual movement. And we started flying. Slooooooowly.

“Yippee?” M-Bot said.

“It is kind of a letdown, isn’t it?”

Still, I did a small loop for Rig, with diagnostics running. When I completed the circle, he gave a thumbs-up, then settled his pack on his shoulder and started hiking off. He had to get back to Igneous to return the sealing equipment.

I couldn’t quite persuade myself to land. After all this time, I wanted to fly a little longer with M-Bot. So I grabbed the altitude lever. The control sphere could make the ship bob up and down, powering the acclivity ring for the finer points of dodging. But if you wanted a quick ascent, this was the way.

I eased it toward me.

We shot upward into the sky.

I hadn’t expected it to work this well. We rocketed upward, and I felt g-forces slam into me, forcing me down. I cringed, noting how fast we were going, and eased off the lever. That kind of g-force would…

… crush me?

I felt the acceleration, but not nearly as much as I should have. I couldn’t be pulling more than three Gs, though I felt like it should have been much more.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Can you be more specific? I have over a hundred and seventy semiautonomous subroutines that—”

“The g-forces,” I said, looking out the window, watching the ground retreat at an alarming pace. “I should be blacking out about now.”

“Oh, yes. That. My gravitational capacitors are capable of belaying sixty percent of g-forces, with a maximum threshold of well over a hundred Earth standard. I did warn you that your ships had primitive systems for handling pilot stress.”

I let off on the altitude lever, and the ship stopped accelerating.

“Would you like to engage rotational g-force management for further help withstanding the forces?” M-Bot asked.