Fire-Forged - A KSP Short Story

[March Unto Torment]

Jebediah Kerman was reasonably sure that he'd had the best job in the world.

Okay, sure, it cut your life expectancy by fifty-odd years, and the engineers treated him like some sort of guinea pig, and he was pretty sure that they were paying him below minimum wage.

But on the other hand, there was nothing in the world that could compare to the feeling of screaming through the sky at speeds that no Kerbal had reached before, sitting on top of a hundred-foot pile of what was more or less high-explosive ordnance repurposed to travel vertically. Nor could anything amuse him more than the look on Gene's face when he buzzed KSC Tower at twice the speed of sound.

However, the emphasis was on had.

Ever since that damned woman had shown up, nothing had gone to plan. First, she'd beaten his test scores; then, she'd started grabbing flights that a year before, would've gone to him in a second. And moreover, command loved her, because unlike him, she had no damned sense of humour at all.

Nowadays, he was mostly relegated to testing prototype fighters for the military. Which, sure, was fun, but he hadn't even gone suborbital for three months. Pulling 9G Kulbits and Cobras was nothing compared to the sensation of screaming straight to orbit.

Most days, he wandered KSC with a mixture of resignation and anger, kicking the odd trashcan when Mortimer wasn't looking (Jeb wasn't entirely sure how he kept the program running on the shoestring budget it had, but it had something to do with making pilots pay for everything he could).

Not today.

He found himself walking towards the briefing room with a certain skip in his step, one that had been missing for all too long. The building was practically deserted - most of the current recruits had been transferred to Kerbin Station for zero-G training - but all the same, he felt more alive than he had in ages, thanks to the rumours floating around KSC. Rumours that there was a new, high-profile assignment for him; Bill had clued him in on a video call last night.

He stepped inside, sprawling himself across as many seats as physically possible. He was well past the point of excitement.

At some point, two thickly-accented voices could be heard in the corridor. Jeb turned his head to notice, although deemed himself far too comfortable to actually face the new arrivals.

First to step into his view was Wernher von Kerman; a small, slightly-built Kerbal in his seventies, clad in a sweeping white coat. A finely-trimmed moustache accompanied an expression of utter self-confidence on his aged features. Nobody knew exactly where he was from, but all Jeb knew was that the scientist had been with the program longer than he had, and nobody had been here longer than he had.

And then the second figure moved through Jeb's field of vision, and he felt his fist clench tight enough to draw blood.

Tall, confident, back straight. Striding like a professional, like he used to. First time face to face but he knew her from TV, she was on all the time - 'photogenic', that was what Bob'd've said. A small, contented smile on determined features, a yellow ribbon holding her hair in a tight ponytail. Clad in the orange Test Pilot jumpsuit, just like he used to wear. She sat just along from him, not even looking at him, back straight, hands folded neatly in her lap, all her attention on Wernher. Her new, holy patron, courtesy of the fact that she hadn't destroyed any of his 'masterpieces' yet.

Frankly, as far as Jeb was concerned, if the thing crashed, it was Wernher's fault, not his.

"It's been a long time, Jebediah," Wernher said, standing at the fore of the room. "Before we proceed, you should meet our newest test pilot. Ms Kerman?"

She turned her head to face Jeb, dark eyes scanning him with a certain even disregard. "Afternoon, Commander," she said, managing to inject a certain warmth into her voice that almost sounded genuine. It momentarily occurred to Jeb that she mightn't bear him the same enmity, but he discarded the thought. That wasn't going to get him anywhere.

"A pleasure, Val," he said, pushing himself into sitting and offering her a hand to shake. Her grip was firm, powerful. He turned his attention to Wernher. "Any reason why the lady's here, von?"

"All shall become clear," Wernher said, hoisting a briefcase onto the desk at the front of the room and clicking it open. "As per the only thing you people seem to be remotely good for, I've called you here to pilot a new prototype of ours."

"What are we dealing with, exactly, sir?" Valentina interjected; her voice was clipped, sharp, her accent nearly-faded. She was already started to fit in. Jeb felt his blood nearly boil.

Wernher rolled out a huge blueprint, nearly five feet to a side, with the same expression one might expect from a proud father showing off his son's sporting trophies. Jeb pushed himself to his feet, stepped over to the table. Any semblance of military discipline had long since left him, he was realising. Getting sloppy, probably.

His eyes danced across the design, the sharp, sweeping lines and the colossal, Kraken-powerful engines. Even the drawing seemed resplendent in its own way, a sleek, indomitable symbol of power. It looked like no aircraft Jeb had ever seen flown before.

"My crowning achievement," Wernher said, in a tone that suggested he had expected more proclamations of amazement from his subordinates. "Fully-reusable. Two hundred feet long, a hundred-twenty feet wide. Thirty-five thousand kilonewtons of thrust at peak. Capable of breaking atmosphere within four minutes of launch with a payload of a hundred tonnes. I call it the 'Valkyrie'."

"This is insane," Valentina muttered under her breath, but Jeb saw the grin spread across it and with no small alarm, realised he had his own. It was beautiful, bigger and faster and stupider than anything else ever flown.

"No, my dear," Wernher said. "It is brilliance. One expects no different of my designs - you know that; but I digress. Suffice to say, I need it tested."

"So why are we both here?" Jeb asked, glancing up, a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach. Surely, Wernher couldn't have simply called him here to witness?! It would be inconceivably cruel, showing him a beast of this magnitude, then refusing to allow him to take it up...

"Oh, yes, of course. I apologise; I occasionally get lost in my own brilliance, as you can imagine," Wernher shrugged. "You see, the Valkyrie is built from the technology of a military prototype - XK-THOR, they called it. K.S.A.F. black ops, very top-secret, suborbital bomber type of weapon. It was cancelled after the peace treaty with the Krussians was signed, and most of it buried, but I found the engines and reproduced them. Quite innovative, if I do say so myself."

"Your point?" Valentina said, eyes flickering to Jeb. "I mean no disrespect to the Commander, but I have logged the best scores in the program, and surely, the weight of a spare pilot would be nothing more than a hindrance."

"With all due respect, lady, I wasn't even trying on those tests," Jeb snapped, spinning to face her down, suddenly frustrated that she was taller than him. "I swear to the Kraken, give me another shot at those and you'll see what a real pilot can-"

"Quiet, both of you!" Wernher shouted, slamming a fist down on the blueprint, before glancing down, as though terrified it might be somehow damaged. "The military are nervous about a Krussian piloting their toy; they want one of their own."

A grin began to split Jeb's face. "And with Bill and Bob sitting around with their thumbs up their asses on Kerbin Station..."

"Correct, Jebediah," Wernher said. "However, this thing costs as much as an entire air wing of those little toys you run around in for the military. Make no mistake - if you do not return this plane in one piece, I will ensure that you never step off this rock again. Do I make myself clear?"

"Sure, sure," Jebediah said, only half-listening at this point; far greater priorities were now at hand, like how the Kraken he was going to make this thing work.

"Oh, and one more thing," Wernher said. "I am not about to let you crash this thing, either. So I'm sending Ms Kerman with you. The two of you will learn cooperate, and hopefully, she will prevent your rampant stupidity from destroying my beautiful creation, Jebediah."

Right then. Well, that complicated matters some.

On one hand, he got to get into space again - and got some thirty-five million Newtons of force to get him there.

On the other hand, he had to deal with her.

On balance, this day suddenly felt profoundly mediocre.

"You ready for this, lady?" Jeb said, affixing his helmet firmly - a matter of religion for him now, ever since he'd been forced to bail out once at twenty thousand metres having forgotten to put one on.

"Naturally," Valentina said, strapping on her gloves as she strode across the tarmac, before her eyes flickered up to meet Jeb's. "A better question might be, 'are you?'"

Jeb laughed, and found himself surprised by that. It occurred to him, staring at the woman as she walked, that there was a spark inside of her. A talent, not unlike his own. He saw it the second she laid eyes upon the Valkyrie's blueprints.

Didn't make her any less of an ....... for taking his job, though.

"That thing is massive."

As much as she annoyed him, Jeb deemed it undeniable that in this instance, Valentina was onto something.

It hadn't really hit him how massive this thing was until he saw it in person. The cockpit alone was nearly thirty feet off the ground, and the massive flared winglets towered even higher into the sky. Each of its six hulking engine cores was as thick around as a standard Kerbal-X launch vehicle.

"You think it'll get in the air?"

"Ten VTOL engines, six BROADSWORDs and four Scramjets," the Krussian woman said, with a sharp laugh. "I'm more worried about getting it back down, with that much thrust."

Jeb flipped open his visor, and pulled his sunglasses from a pocket in his piloting gear. He slid them onto his face, and slid the faceplate shut again. Now he felt ready.

"That," he said, a smirk dancing across his features "is a problem for future Jeb to worry about."

He strode towards the aircraft, feeling more dwarfed by it every second. He clambered up the ladder, hands wrapping familiar around aerospace steel like they hadn't in a long time. It was gargantuan, this thing, gargantuan and invincible and beautiful in its raw power. This was what he loved about working for the Space Program - mad Wernher might've been, but if the man had been sane, this job wouldn't've been half as fun as it was.

He turned around halfway up the ladder, looking over to Valentina, looking so small and insignificant, studiously fastening the airtight zips on her gloves.

"C'mon, lady!" he shouted, over the distant thudding of waves. "Less slackin', more flyin'!"

Then he looked forward, and noted the location of the door. He clicked on the radio in his helmet.

"Gene, you there?"

"This is KSC Tower, copy," crackled back. "What can we do for you?"

"Can you ask Wernher why the cockpit door's right next to the frontal ram intake?"

There was a lengthy pause. "He says it's to discourage you from bailing out."

"Brilliant," Jeb muttered, as he clambered inside. "The genius at work..."

A few seconds later, and they were all strapped in; the control panels were largely simple, filled with advanced-looking touchscreens and LCD displays, along with a whole pile of buttons. Still, he was relieved to see a regular old-fashioned piloting stick in front of the three pilot's seats, arranged in a triangle at the forward of the craft, along with a pair of engineering stations further back.

"Whereabouts you from, anyhow?" Jeb asked, running through the preflight checks absentmindedly; by the looks of it, everything was working as it should've, which admittedly, was a nice change from Wernher's usual designs.

"The countryside, out in Krussia," she said. "Cold, icy, but friendly. The place is not as bad as you have been told."

Jeb found himself wondering if she was just running some official line, or if she was genuine. Through the accent, it was hard to tell. From what he'd seen of his own, Krussia was mostly frigid forests and vast plains of tundra.

"And you?" Val asked, as she tested out her own set of controls.

"Southern K.S., thousand miles from anywhere," Jeb said. "Grew up learning to fly cropdusters. Of course, my dad put a stop to that after I managed to land one on the roof of the neighbour's barn, but it was damn worth it, lemme tell you..."

He finished the checks a second later, and placed a hand on the throttle, wrapping his hand around it. It had been years since he'd piloted anything with this layout, yet his body felt to respond instinctively to the cluttered interior of the spacecraft. To his right, Val keyed up the primary engine ignition, and in a second, Jeb could hear the low, throaty whine of the Broadswords and VTOL thrusters spooling up.

"KSC Tower, this is Valkyrie, requesting permission for takeoff," Valentina said.

"Solid copy, Valkyrie, you are cleared for takeoff," Gene's crisp, professional tone sounded. "Fly safe, Val. Stop Jeb from doing anything too stupid, alright?"

"I heard that, Gene," Jeb laughed. "Don't make me see how low I can take this thing over the tower."

"Want me to revoke your takeoff clearance, Jebediah?"

"Point taken. Valkyrie, taking off."

Already impatient, Jeb pushed the throttle to maximum, and for a second, things moved slowly, as the sound of the engines moved from a low roar. The start was gentle, slow, but in a second, the roar of the engines became deafening, accompanied by the static noise of the underbelly VTOL engines, giving them extra lift while the primary engines waited to enter their thrust band.

Jeb felt himself pushed back in his seat as the acceleration increased massively, almost four hundred tonnes of spacecraft tearing down the runway at frankly insane speeds. White titanium flashed like a swan in the warm glow of tropical day. Under the immense vibration of the engines, only the upwards ticking of the altimeter denoted that they'd taken off at all - in surprisingly quick time, too.

"Killing VTOLs," Val stated, flicking a switch. The noise of static drowned away, and after a moment's lurching drop, the aircraft seemed to catch itself on its own lift, and entered level flight.

"KSC Tower, Valkyrie is airborne," Jeb grinned, still feeling himself pressed back into his seat as the hulking craft roared towards transsonic speeds. He toyed left and right with the stick, and felt it roll surprisingly responsively. His gleeful toying earned him a look from Val, who then grinned and adjusted pitch; it was no less responsive in that respect, every movement of the pilot translated straight to the craft's movements.

"Somebody tell Wernher that I could use this thing to dogfight," Jeb said, before grinning and adding, "and should, for that matter. Can someone gimme a target drone?"

"Stay focused, Jeb," Gene said. "That's six hundred million dollars of SSTO right there."

"Yeah, yeah," Jeb said, peering at the screens through his sunglasses. "Holding level at two thousand feet and slowly climbing towards the sound barrier. Things are looking good up here."

"How many times do I need to tell you to use metric?" came a sigh over the radio.

"Can it, Gene," Jeb said, killing the radio. Suddenly, Valentina tapped him on the shoulder; Jeb turned, hitting the stability assist as he did so.

"Alright, Commander, I've got to know," Valentina said. "What's with the aviators? I mean no offence, but all things considered, you look like a complete idiot."

"They were a present from Bill," Jeb shrugged. "I think he was joking. I'm not. I look like a damn badass in these, thank you very much."

"Can you actually read the text on the displays wearing them?" Valentina asked, raising an eyebrow.

There was a lengthy pause, as Jebediah returned to the controls.

"Flying's more exhilarating without instruments anyway."

Valentina just sighed, and went back to taking note of the screens. Within thirty seconds, the craft had breached the sound barrier, and suddenly, the Scramjets roared to life, just as the Broadswords hit their thrust band.

Jeb yanked on the stick, throwing the massive spaceplane into a ten-degree inclination. Suddenly, the speed readings started spiralling upwards - six, seven, eight hundred metres per second, before the craft had even breached five kilometres of altitude. Valentina's head whipped around as she outside of the front screen lit up orange and white with the brutal shock heating.

Jeb saw her hand stray for just a second towards the throttle on her side, before a wide grin crossed her features and she pulled it away. She turned to him, and let out a short laugh. "Let's push her to her limits, hm?"

"Now you're speaking my language, lady," Jeb grinned, maintaining the ascent course closely; the plane was twitchy in the upper atmosphere, constantly trying to roll one way or the other. Probably some aerodynamic unbalance that made it necessary to modify.

Valentina, for her part, kept a close eye on the intake air; the second they hit 20,000m, it began to drop off swiftly, and with a quick nod to Jeb, she hit the mode switch. There was a weighty thunk as the hulking BROADSWORD engines switched over, before the deeper, thicker roar of burning LFO filled the cabin.

"KSC Tower, Valkyrie'sengine switch is complete," Valentina said, keying the radio. "Switching to orbital comms on your mark."

"Solid copy, Valkyrie," Gene's crisp, cordial voice crackled, the radio waves fragmenting in the upper atmosphere. "Mark."

A brief flurry of button clicks later, and there was nothing else to be done; Jeb throttled down as they approached a hundred thousand feet, coasting to the edge of the atmosphere. As he waited, he switched over to orbital communications.

"Kerbin Station, this is Commander Jebediah Kerman," he stated, his southern K.S. accent drawling across the radio. "Do you copy?"

"Loud and clear, Jeb," a familiar voice echoed. "I don't even want to know what you had to do to get up there again, after that stunt you pulled on the Minmus return."

"Good to hear from you too, Bill," Jeb laughed, as he adjusted pitch, readying for the circularisation burn. "How's life upstairs?"

"Not exploding. It's a nice change."

"Sounds great and all," Jeb grinned, "but I'll keep my SSTO, sunglasses and beautiful Krussian co-pilot."

"You're flying with Val now?"

"You two know each other?" Jeb asked, hitting the main engines and feeling himself pushed firmly back into his seat.

"She turns up around here now and then. There's not a damned person on the station who isn't afraid of her. She's almost as scary as you, Jeb."

"Scary?" Jeb laughed, looking over at the woman as he killed the engines, only to realise that she was giving him a steely-eyed glare. There was a lengthy pause, before he flashed her a smile.

"No idea what you're talking about, Bill."

He clicked off the radio, and turned to her; unclipping himself from the seat, he felt himself float up, utterly weightless in the zero-gravity, stomach turning for just a second before settling.

The sensation was familiar, the endless falling through the undying void of space; through the titanium-barred glass windows, the dancing blanket of stars fanned out across the sky, a trillion points of endless, unreachable light.

"It's only up here that you realise how far away it all is," Valentina muttered, floating up behind him, before her vision snapped to him, her voice like concrete in the weightless air. "For whatever little it's worth, nobody deserves to have this stripped away."

Jeb opened his mouth, contemplated answering on her terms, refused it. "What's next, lady?"

"I'm guessing you didn't read the mission plan?" Valentine asked, as she pushed herself over towards the airlock.

"Last instruction I ever read was a note my father left telling me that men never read instructions. Haven't looked back since."

"And you wonder why my test scores are better than yours," Valentina smirked beneath her helmet, as she keyed in the airlock code. "Just try not to leave me stranded. Bob tells me he once spent three days in a lander floating in orbit."

"In my defence," Jeb said, pulling himself over towards the control panel, "I did come get him."

"Eventually..." Valentina said, with a teasing smile.

"Don't tempt me to nudge the throttle," Jeb said, and a second later, Valentine had vanished. Jeb almost jumped out of his skin as a thud echoed through the cockpit, and Valentina's grinning face drifted past the main cockpit windows.

"Very funny," he said, keying the radio. She just laughed harder and pulled herself up, drifting languidly out of view.

In, out. In, out.

Valentina repeated that to herself, again and again, as she pulled herself along the surface of the immense spaceplane. Before her, a solid forty metres of cargo bay folded open, revealing the cavernous space within.

She drifted in, still controlling her breathing precisely but unable to hold back the grin spreading itself on her features. She had to be careful, could get ahead of herself, run out of oxygen fast.

It was still incredible, though. All those years ago, hearing the firework cracking of laser-guided ordnance on the distant cities, the distant echoes of war; all she'd wanted was away, to flee from this world.

Looking down over it, she could see the sweeping continent of Krussia, the towering mountains and flowing forests. No hint of the bloodstained ground, the broken cities and colossal craters that scarred the planet.

Back then, all she'd wanted was to follow those return-fire rockets to the sky, towards the stars. She'd never thought that she'd make it here.

"Hey, lady," Jeb's thickly-accented, K.S. voice crackled over the radio, drawling and practically bleeding self-confidence. "What'd you do before you ended up taking my job, anyhow?"

"Krussian air force," Valentina said, as she fell into the towering darkness of the cargo bay, inspecting the walls closely for heat damage. "You're military too."

"Four years," Jeb said. "Glad it's all over, though. I liked the adrenaline, but never much enjoyed having to drop bombs on people. Flyin's fun; hurtin' people, ain't so much."

Those words echoed for the longest time in Valentina's head as she scoured the interior of the cargo bay. Hurtin' people, ain't so much. Maybe there was a little more to Jeb than she'd considered.

"No heat damage," Valentina said. "I'm seeing some loose piping, though; I think it fell out of the bracket."

"Look important?"

"Negative. Are you reading any pressure indicators?"

"She's clean as a queen's butthole in here."

"Uh, copy. Returning to cockpit."

Silence crackled over the radio as Valentina pulled herself forward, drifting out of the empty cargo bay and back towards the cockpit, her entire body serene and peaceful and utterly without any of the weight of the world.

She glanced up at the fragmentary sky, still telling herself to breathe in and out, in and out. If she wasn't careful, she could stop breathing in a second, her mind wandering forever in the field of dead stars.

"Why'd you fight?" Jeb's voice crackled over the radio. She drifted over the cockpit windows, giving him a friendly wave and laughing again as he jumped in surprise.

"I wanted to fly."

Re-entry was, Jeb had to admit, his favourite part of any flight.

The spaceplane deorbited after maybe a couple of hours of reasonably-dull systems tests, which by Jeb's own admission, largely consisted of the two of them pretending to work while gazing at the stars. He didn't know what her reason was, but for him, he didn't know if he was going to see it again.

He shut that out of his mind. Of course he was going to see it again. And moreover, he was going to prove that he was sure as Kraken a better pilot than Valentina was.

The Valkyrie screamed through the upper atmosphere at thousand of miles per hour, crimson licking at the black hull tiles as it shock-heated the sky around it into an angelic halo.

"Status?" Valentina asked from the back of the cockpit, running checks on the engineering.

"Control surfaces are a little twitchy," Jeb said, before flashing Valentina a smile. "But I reckon she just likes me."

"Yeah, sure," Valentina laughed. "Eyes on the flying. I wouldn't want to offend you by having to save you."

Suddenly, there was a loud crack!, the sound reverberating in metallic echoes throughout the craft's walls. In an instant, Valentina rushed over to her seat.

"What the Kraken was that?"

"Not sure," Jeb said. "Can't've been that important. Besides, what's spaceflight without explosions?"

"I'm starting to realise why Wernher fired you," Valentina said, checking over her instruments. "How's she holding?"

"I reckon she likes me a little less," Jeb said, as the stars beyond began to shift. He flipped on reaction control and tried to haul her right, but got no response. He cocked an eyebrow. "Hey, lady, you got any control authority over there? I think my stick's busted."

Valentina tried to bank left, but the massive craft simply kept rolling right, and out the window, she saw the sunlit edge of a blue-and-green world, drifting serenely past through the shock-heated flames.

"Commander," she said, in a tone that suggested near-boredom, "I think we have a small problem with our attitude control."

"Problem?" Jeb asked, pulling his harness tight as the world beneath them began to spin. He flipped open his visor and slid his sunglasses on, struggling against the shifting pull of gravity. "Lady, Jebediah Kerman doesn't have problems. This is just the fun part."

It was at that moment that a grin crossed Valentina Kerman's face, and she strapped herself in.

"I'm reading two thousand metres per second," she said, scanning her instrument panel, as the craft managed to completely invert itself and then started pitching. "Attitude control is dead. Stability control seems to be having some sort of seizure, too."

"Well, let's fix that," Jeb said, jabbing at buttons until the SAS light flicked off. "There. Flight computers never know what they're damn well doing anyway."

Valentina flicked through menus on the display, until something finally showed up. "Got it. We've lost monoprop pressure. RCS seems to be taking a holiday."

"Oh, that's what that warning was," Jeb said. "Huh. Probably should've checked."

"Did you actually look at the pressure gauges when we were running checks?"

"I was wearing my sunglasses at the time," Jeb said, shooting her a quick apologetic smile. "I generally assume that unless there are pieces falling off, things will work out fine. It's always worked out in the past."

"You may just be the stupidest person I've ever met," Valentina shook her head. "Alright, so we've got no RCS and not enough air to use control surfaces. Did this thing come with reaction wheels?"

"I guess Wernher figured that his brilliant RCS design wouldn't break," Jeb said.

"Alright, second-stupidest."

"I'll take it." Jeb felt the blood start to pull in funny directions around his body, suddenly light-headed. The craft began to enter a violent tailspin, pressure gauges fluctuating all over the place. Clearly, it wasn't designed to handle these sorts of forces.

"Thirty thousand metres," Val said. "Speed's at eighteen hundred. Any plans, Commander?"

"Start praying to the Kraken?"

"We'll shear the control surfaces off if we try arresting ourselves at this speed," Valentina ignored him, as suddenly, they were facing skyward again, re-entering straight backwards before it resumed its tailspin a moment later. "We need some thrust vectoring. A lot of thrust vectoring."

"Gimme something to work with, then," Jeb said. "I don't feel like introducing myself to the ocean this afternoon, lady."

"For Kraken's sake, stop calling me that," Valentina said, thumbing the engine switch. There was the cracking of the ignition circuits, the electrical discharge echoing throughout the craft, but the roar of thrust was absent. She heard Jeb swear under his breath.

"Looks like ignition's dead," she said, as she unclipped herself from her seat. "Someone's going to have to restart those things manually." She turned, holding on tight, waiting for the craft to orient itself in such a way that she could fall in the direction she wanted to.

Suddenly, Jeb's hand planted itself on her shoulder. She stared straight into those stupid sunglasses of his as he spoke.

"Look, I should go," Jeb said, voice suddenly bearing the weight of a man twice his age. "I ain't about to ask you to do something this dangerous. It just ain't right."

"You're the famous Jebediah Kerman, right?" Valentina said, looking him dead in the eyes. "Fly the damned plane."

With that, she pushed off, falling straight towards the back door of the cockpit. She slammed against the aerospace steel wall, pain flashing before her eyes from the impact.

She held on tight to the door handle as the flow of gravity changed again, trying to pull her towards the cockpit glass. A second later, and it was back, the craft spinning around and facing backwards again.

He wrenched open the door, then fell through, feeling it slam shut as the craft's balance changed. She tumbled through the narrow corridor, grabbing onto a handhold at the last second. The air was thick with bloodred emergency lighting.

Another second and the balance changed once more, and she dropped through the open door, falling past four rows of passenger seats. Through the window at the back of the room, she could see the dark, cavernous expanse of the cargo bay.

C'mon, Val, she told herself. Don't be the one to mess this up.

She dropped, hitting the edge of the space. Suddenly, the craft's balance tipped unexpectedly, and she plummeted, slamming against the corner of the passenger bay before she could find a handhold. Pain shot through her arm, straight into her skull, and she heard a distant scream.

"You alright in there, lady?" Jeb's voice crackled into her helmet. "That didn't sound like fun."

"Pain's just weakness leaving the body," she replied, before pushing herself over to the door, ignoring the pulsating pain in her forearm. "I'll be fine. Where are we?"

"Twenty-thousand, still doing fifteen hundred," Jeb replied. "Let me tell you, things are getting pretty warm outside now. We're not shedding parts yet, but I have a feeling we're about to test this thing's build quality."

She pulled the door with her good arm, suddenly facing the vast expanse of the cargo bay; there was a quiet rush of air as the passenger bay's oxygen rapidly extracted into the open space. She held onto the gap of the door, then waited until the balance shifted vertically, and dropped.

She hit the ground and sprinted along the tilting floor, making it as far as she could while gravity still worked in a semi-normal direction. A second later, the spaceplane rolled, and she jumped, hit the side wall and kept running, jumping over every pipe and structural spar in her way, desperately trying to not trip.

A single movement could mean a broken leg, and death thereafter, but she didn't have time to consider that, adrenaline pounding through her veins.

Down the other end, she saw what she needed - the engine ignition system, half-obscured in darkness. Gravity went vertical, and she felt herself float, suddenly free-falling straight towards the bottom of the cargo bay.

She grabbed onto a handhold, wrenching herself to a halt, pain shooting through her bad arm. Blinking away stars, she pushed herself forward, clawing her way towards the engine maintenance. She pulled open the panel, looking over the complicated mess of wires.

Sparks flew at her visor as she tried to key the manual ignition - nothing. A warning flashed up on the display - not enough pressure for ignition. Without an engineer on hand, she had no hope of making repairs, even if there had been time.

"Ten thousand metres, lady," Jeb's voice cut through the pounding pain in her skull. "No pressure."

She looked around, seeing the burst RCS pipes to her right, running right below. An idea occurred to her. A spectacularly stupid idea.

She grabbed the two monopropellant lines, still leaking vapour into the vacuum. The mechanism of operation for the RCS was simple - a small volume of hypergolic fuel was mixed in a controlled volume, generating a thrust.

She locked the pump, and then disconnected the hoses, pulling them up towards the ignition section. There were two small pipes through which to run cleaning fluids through the engines. Fortunately, Wernher seemed to have cheaped out on the design - everything had commercial fittings.

"Commander, hold on," she said, and after muttering a brief prayer to the Kraken, pressed both of them into the cleaning fluid attachments, grunting as pain shot through her bad arm.

She hit the RCS release, before thumbing the ignition circuit again. There was an electrical crack, one, two, three times, before -

Yes! Valentina punched the air with her good arm, as the familiar sound of jet turbines spooling up began to roar through the cargo bay. A second later, she pulled herself back, as the craft shifted itself nose-down.

She plummeted, falling through layer after layer of open doors, bouncing violently through the crew tube before slamming into the cockpit.

She bounced from the roof down, landing back-first on the control console, pain shooting through her body. She blinked away stars, and with no small degree of surprise, found herself looking into a pair of sunglasses.

"Lovely as it is to see you again, I do need to fly," Jeb said, and Valentina pushed herself away, strapping herself into her chair with her good arm.

The flow of gravity shifted as the tailspin continued, the aircraft shifting itself backwards. Jeb's hand rested on the throttle, studying the navball studiously.

The second the craft's orientation hit retrograde, he slammed on the engines at full thrust, and the cockpit was filled with the roar of tens of thousands of kilonewtons of thrust spooling up.

She was pushed back into her seat as the craft's fall decelerated, watching as Jeb precisely shifted the stick from left to right, using the thrust vectoring to hold it stable.

To her endless shock, it held stable, the craft somehow - and for the life of her, she didn't know how - pushing itself into a firm vertical orientation.

Jeb held it in place, every movement exactly coordinated to maintain retrograde, the engines screaming as they tried to hold some three hundred tonnes of spaceplane vertical.

The deceleration ticked down, three hundred, two hundred, one hundred. The altitude was still dropping like a rock, less than a kilometre to go. The world seemed to stop, everything hanging in the balance for a long second.

Suddenly, with a painful groan of titanium, the speed hit zero.

"VTOL!" Jeb shouted, and Val reached out with her good arm, punching the vertical thrusters as the craft's balance pulled it into facing forward.

Suddenly, the speed began to tick up - ten, fifty, a hundred metres per second. She flicked off the VTOL, and after a moment's bobbing, the craft held stable, held aloft by its own lift. Jeb hit stability control, the Valkyrie finally pulling into level flight at cruising speed.

Jeb took off his helmet, cracking his neck and pulling his sunglasses, turning to Valentina with a grin the size of Krussia across his face.

"That," he said, "was the most fun I've had in ages."

Valentina paused, looked him up and down, considered, and then started laughing too, a smile spreading itself across her features. She pulled her helmet, laughing as she shook out her hair.

"I'll be honest," she said. "Done a lot of things in my life. Never fallen from orbit in a tailspin, though. You really are as insane as Bill and Bob say."

"There's a reason why I'm called the 'thrillmaster', you know," Jeb grinned, folding his arms behind his head. "And really, lady, I'm offended that you expected anything less."

For the longest time, nothing happened, no words passing between them, just the relief of shared breathing. Jeb set course for the nearest continent, intending to set them down in a field somewhere or other; they'd missed KSC by thousands of kilometres, and the Valkyrie didn't have enough fuel in to make the extra distance.

Eventually, the outcroppings of land could be seen in the distance, and Jeb slowly took the massive spaceplane down, the aircraft now handling fine back in lower atmosphere. He spotted a nice green plain, extending landing gear and switching off stability assist.

"Brace," Jeb said. While not as exhilarating as pulling an aircraft out of a hypersonic tailspin, Valentina knew full well how dangerous uneven landings had the potential to be.

The plane fell slowly, and he nudged the stick left and right, matching orientation with the ground. He hit the ground slowly, doing about a hundred-fifty miles an hour, landing the immense vehicle with the grace of a Kessna.

"Chutes!" Jeb ordered, and Valentina hit the release, the plane's drogue parachutes pulling hard at it, slowing it down to a standstill in seconds, before the ground became uneven. Valentina could hardly believe what she was seeing as the vast aircraft rolled gently to a stop.

She breathed heavily, the pain in her arm worse now but not unbearable. It was natural to incur a few injuries in this line of work, after all, and she wasn't about to be a baby like the male pilots tended to be whenever they had a rough landing.

All the same, she welcomed Jeb's help stepping out of the cockpit and climbing down the ladder.

"We're not dead," Jeb reflected as they stood on the ground, both wearing exhausted, thin-lipped smiles. For her part, Valentina was happy enough just to feel solid ground beneath her feet again.

"I may have been driven mad by the G-forces up there," Valentina said, turning to him, "But we should definitely do that again sometime."

"I'll admit, lady," Jeb said, "you're not such a bad copilot, as they go."

"Copilot?" Valentina laughed, "I saved your sorry butt up there, Jebediah."

"Sure, Val, sure," Jeb said, pulling the beacon from his flight suit. "C'mon. Let's call recovery. First drinks are on me tonight."

[Whoo! My first KSP short story!

Major credit to Nertea for producing Mk. IV Spaceplane Parts, which form the core of the Valkyrie, as well as the makers of the mods Procedural Wings, Hypersonic Mk. 3 Systems and Kerbal Aircraft Expansion, all of which went into making it. I'd advise you all to check out all of those mods!

And for the curious, yes, this mission did actually happen. The one shot I wish I'd gotten for this story was of the plane pulling to a halt in vertical orientation, before levelling out.

I hope you all enjoyed it! I always welcome feedback

Best regards,

- March Unto Torment]

Edited September 13, 2015 by March Unto Torment

[Mister Dilsby]

Excellent read! Loved the tension between Jeb and Val, and their eventual mutual respect. Those two, badS each in their own way, are a reall interesting pair. A couple of things took me out of the kerbalverse though: things like "humanly possible" and giving units in USCS units i.e. feet. How long is a Kerbal's foot, anyway? But srsly--those just snapped me out of KSP mode for a minute and then it was back to a good gritty tale with real personalities and life in our favorite orangesuits.

[March Unto Torment]

A couple of things took me out of the kerbalverse though: things like "humanly possible" and giving units in USCS units i.e. feet. How long is a Kerbal's foot, anyway?

Whoops! Need to fix the 'humanly possible'.

Feet, though, was an intentional stylistic choice - I can't imagine Jeb talking in metric, anyhow.

[Mister Dilsby]

Feet, though, was an intentional stylistic choice - I can't imagine Jeb talking in metric, anyhow.

Then let it stand. Though American, I'm a bit of a metric partisan. Had my car serviced today and confused the heck out of the techs because I have the odometer set for km instead of miles. Oh well

[The_Rocketeer]

units in USCS units i.e. feet.

You mean Imperial.