//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 (Rewritten) 
// Story: Just Like Magic of Old 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

“I don’t know, I’m eight!”
Princess Short Flight looked fearfully at her navigation panels after her exclamation to Orbital Control.  It was true- she was eight, so she didn’t know anything she ought to have known before being allowed to fly a starship any kind of distance.  Things like how to understand the various orbital codes, or the math required to get the ship into one of those orbits.
She had, at least, read the ship user’s manual before she got behind the helm.  So at least she knew how to alter her heading and vector.  And what all the various alarms meant- thus, how she knew it was telling her she was on a dangerous suborbital trajectory.  The annoying buzzer wouldn’t turn off until she adjusted her orbit to either encounter the atmosphere at a safe velocity…  or stay out of it entirely.
Only thing was, she didn’t know which way to burn in order to make that happen.
And while she knew Orbital Control was trying to help her, she also knew she had a matter of about twenty minutes before she hit the atmosphere.
And she had no idea what the words Orbital Control used to tell her which way to burn meant.  It had been an angle she understood- but it had been an angle between ‘retrograde’ and ‘antiradial’, reference points she most certainly did not understand.
“Alright,” the controller working with her transmitted.  It sounded like she was speaking through gritted teeth, yet forcing herself to stay professional.  “Can you burn three hundred to antiradial in ninety-three seconds, mark?”
Funny, that was a smaller number than the angled burn…  though there was a much shorter time to execution.  Fortunately, she knew enough of their standard communication practices- her ‘burn three hundred’ meant to burn three hundred meters per second.  Since her ship had just over twelve hundred meters per second remaining, she was pretty sure the ship could do that; if she really pushed it, she could make any heading change in forty seconds or less.
If only she knew which way ‘antiradial’ was.
She engaged her transmitter again.  “Um…  Which way is that?”
There was a pause.  “You…  don’t know what ‘antiradial’ is?”
She shook her head, even though the controller wouldn’t see it.  “I do not.”
“You know how your orbit is roughly elliptical around the planet?  Antiradial is perpendicular to that path, facing out, away from the planet.”
She took a few seconds to think about it.  “So, I’ll be facing away from the planet, but at a ninety degree angle from my vector?”
“Yes!”  The controller sounded exasperated.
She started to reach for the controls- it’d take about thirty-five seconds to make that turn, and she had forty to the burn- then, very suddenly, the proximity alarm went off.  She let out a yelp, abandoning the helm to examine the maneuvering display.  There shouldn’t be anything that close!
But there was.  Dead ahead, about three seconds from impact on her current course.  And it was enormous.
She stared at the display for a second, then closed her eyes.  She could only pray that heaven existed, and that she was not doomed to hell for failing her parents.
A second later, the buzzer died.
She waited a couple seconds, before opening her eyes to peer out the windshield.  Nothing.  She peered at her maneuvering display- also nothing.  “What in the world…?”  She raised one hoof to rub her horn, which had started itching for some reason.  Then she glanced back down at the time readout.  “Musta been a sensor ghost, I guess.”  She scowled at the timer; she was too late to make the turn before the burn.  She reached for the radio again, and depressed the key.  “Um…  Which way was retrograde?”
“Retrograde is the opposite of your current vector,” the controller stated.  “And if you’re going to do that burn instead, it’s in seventy-three seconds.”
She read back the notes she’d made earlier on the burn, after setting the timer again.
“Ahh, readback is correct.  You doing it, or…?”  The controller sounded exasperated, but tired…  and a lot less angry than before.  Disappointed, maybe?
She pulled on the levers, beginning the required heading change.  “Yeah.  Thirty seconds I’ll be on heading, then wait…  thirty-eight seconds, I think, to burn in sixty-two from now, mark?”
“Ahh, that’s sixty-one from your mark.”
“Sixty-one, roger.”  She deducted a second from the timer and guided her ship onto the required heading.  She then spent several seconds fine-tuning the angle and programming the burn, then waited the twenty or so seconds left before the burn…  and struck the ignite key.  Fortunately, while the computer might not understand ‘retrograde’ and ‘antiradial’, it did understand four hundred and someodd meters per second, and had no qualms with using its advanced processors to make the burn extremely precise.
She waited until the computer completed the burn, flattening her ears against the angry yelling she knew her parents were producing way back in their module.  The traffic controller hadn’t figured out what she could understand until after it was too late for a standard, low-gee burn, so she’d had to go full power- and her parents will have been blasted into their couch by an apparent seven gees.  Besides, she had a developing headache- and since the crash warning buzzer had finally quit, she could relax…  some.  “Alright,” she called in.  “I’m now in a stable orbit…  Do I need to adjust it any, or…?”
“Ahh…  yes, unfortunately.  I’m going to need you to burn six five to antinormal, centered in three-seven-two seconds, mark.”
She sets the timer.  “Uh…  Okay.  Which way is antinormal?”
“Imagine you were standing on the planet directly under your ship, facing prograde- that’s forwards, to match your vector.  Antinormal would then be to your right.”
She looked at her maneuvering display.  “So…  perpendicular to the plane of my orbit…  and mostly south?”
“Yes.”
She nodded, manipulating the helm to point the ship.  Her parents’ module was in her central cargo bay, at the center of mass, so they didn’t care how much she spun the thing around.  She then keyed in the burn order to the computer.  “Alright then.  That was six five to antinormal, centered in three-three-one seconds, mark?”
“Readback and time is correct.”
“Can I do it at half a meter per second squared?”
“Affirmative.”
“Roger.  Initiating one-three-zero second burn, total six-five to antinormal, in two-five-seven seconds…  Mark.”
“Correct.”
She took a deep breath, and let it out.  “Alright.  I’ll call in again when the burn is complete?”
“Ahh, negative, actually.  When the burn is complete, you’ll be in your designated orbital slot- I believe I gave you the information earlier?”
She read it back from a sidebar on her maneuvering display.
“Readback is correct.  Is your ship equipped with an orbital verification system?”
“Ahh…  Yes, it is.”  It was equipped with quite a lot more than that- everything except something that understood what retrograde, antiradial, and antinormal were…  but most of that was top secret.
“Roger.  Once the burn completes, if verification comes back positive, signal done with engines.  If not, call me up again and we’ll figure out what adjustments to make.”
“Understood.”  She let out a final sigh, and watched the time to execution display tick down.  This time, she’d had plenty of time to set the computer up to initiate the burn on its own as well.
A sudden banging sounded on the hatch.  She glanced at the door control system, before punching the intercom key.  She really didn’t want to deal with her mother and her growing headache at the same time, but she didn’t have much of a choice.
Her mother scowled out of her screen, before repositioning herself to look at her screen- and, with it, the camera- better.  “Short Flight!” she barked.
She sighed at the screen.  “Yes, Mother?”
“Why in the world didn’t you warn us you were going to burn hard?”
“It was either that, or crash into the planet,” she answered carefully.  “I didn’t think any extra warnings were needed, since you knew I was going to be making burns.”
Her mother practically exploded with fury.  “You should have warned us you were making a fifty-gee burn!  Your father chipped his horn!  You should-  What-!”
Saved by the bell, Short Flight sighed internally, watching her mother throw her hooves at the handholds.  Unfortunately, the mare wasn’t wearing her H.A.N.D.S., so she only managed to push herself away from them…  before falling, kinda slowly, back away from the screen and out of sight.  Flight turned forward, cutting the connection and turning to watch the maneuvering display.  The computer had started the burn on schedule, conveniently saving her from finding out whatever gruesome thing her parents had been doing in their module.  There was a reason she’d wanted to use her ship for this operation, rather than her parents’ ship- and it wasn’t just that she was low on fuel.  No- on her ship, she could tell them to do their…  thing in their module, and nowhere else.  And, unlike anywhere else, they’d actually listen.
She was heartily tired of their mess being…  everywhere.
On the surface of a planet, where there’s gravity, they were not bad about it- and they did their adult things on their bed…  then have the maids change the sheets three times a day.  To her knowledge, the maids didn’t complain because they were paid not to complain.
She wasn’t, though.  In space, her parents got worse.  They did it everywhere…  then didn’t even bother going to the bathroom when they needed to go, either.  Which meant that their ships all stank to high heaven, and the few times she’d flown in them, she’d often had to wipe something disgusting off the control panels before she could read it.
On her ship…  Well, their module wasn’t technically even part of it.  No, that thing was just a remodeled cargo container, held in place by the cargo clamps in her cargo bay.  There wasn’t even an airlock between it and her ship- instead, the bay was pressurized.  Their bedroom was part of the same module- and when that trip is finally complete, cleaning her entire ship of all of their gunk would be as simple as opening the cargo bay doors, releasing the docking clamps, and asking for a tug to tow the module away.  Her parents were strictly forbidden from doing any of that outside of their module, or emerging from it when not clean- so they almost never emerged from it, even to reach an external airlock.  After all, she could just depressurize and open that cargo bay and let them use the external airlock on their module.  If they needed a small craft, they could hire a local one, not use one of the ones she had in some of her other bays.
Of course, the main reason she’d actually wanted to fly this mission at all, let alone use her own ship for it, was that her ship was running low on fuel.  And now, with just over seven hundred meters per second of fuel remaining, it didn’t have the fuel to return home.  Which meant, since her parents would pay any price to get home, she could tank up on their dime, and not have to spend her scanty allowance on fuel.
Well…  her scanty allowance, plus the rather significant stash of funds hidden in the bank account Admiral Mantle Core had helped her set up, that she’d earned by offering to use her ship to move stuff around the fleet back home.  Hardly nothing in fuel cost, as she spent most of those trips drifting from one ship to another.  They even paid her handsomely for the time she’d had to spend away from her parents, and she’d got a huge amount of practice with docking maneuvers, along with some less significant practice with the rest of her computer support.  She’d never told anyone that she enjoyed the time away from her parents as well.
By the time the burn finally completed, her headache had grown very painful.  She rubbed the side of her head long enough to see the green checkmark of the orbital verification system coming back positive, before going through her well-practiced motions of signalling done with engines…  and locking out the controls.  A quick glance at the life support readout indicated that her mother had scrambled back into their module and sealed the door, so she locked the inner cargo bay doors and partially depressurized the bay- their door was large and opened inwards- before scrambling out of her chair and kicking off the control panel, launching herself straight towards the door into her private chambers.  If she was honest with herself, she was lucky her parents let her buy this ship- and didn’t care what she did with it.
She slipped through the hatch, closed it behind her, and launched herself for her bed.  As usual, her Hands had no difficulty catching the straps that keep her in bed in zero gravity, so she crawled into bed swiftly.  Once in, with the straps adjusted, she reached up to lock her Hands into their charging frames, and started rubbing her horn gently.  It almost felt like something was trying to expand inside her horn- but that couldn’t be.  There were only blood lines, nerves, and a bit of useless vestigial biology.
It didn’t take her long before she fell into the peaceful embrace of sleep.