“You’ve got the miracle,” Talia whispered.
“You. You’re going.”
She nudged the throttle. The Skipper slid sideways, not forward. The gyros whined in protest, but Talia ignored them. She rode the shockwaves like a surfer on a tsunami, using the star’s own fury to slingshot her closer. Every instinct screamed to pull away, but she leaned into the madness. the rookie talia
On the Odyssey , Captain Elara stared at her screen. The Skipper wasn’t docked. It was fused . The rookie had used the impact itself as a braking mechanism, welding her own ship to theirs. It was the ugliest, most brilliant maneuver Elara had ever seen.
The rookie’s name was Talia, and she was the worst pilot in the Galactic Fleet. That wasn't just an opinion; it was a statistical fact, stamped on her file in bold red letters. Her ship, the Stardust Skipper , had more dents than a recycled asteroid, and her landing record was a running joke at the Ceres Base mess hall. “You’ve got the miracle,” Talia whispered
They didn’t promote her that week. But they did stop laughing. And when the next distress call came—a freighter stuck in a methane storm over Saturn—Admiral Voss didn’t point his finger.
So when the distress call crackled through—a civilian research vessel, the Odyssey , losing orbit around a collapsing neutron star—everyone expected Talia to be sidelined. Instead, Voss pointed a thick finger at her. The Skipper slid sideways, not forward
“Sir,” Sharpe said, “her gyros are miscalibrated by twelve degrees. She flies by instinct.”
