A very short piece following a journey.
Fine drizzle drifted slowly down from the dark sky, glowing when it passed close to the spaceport floodlights, eddying into all imperfect shelter with random breaths of wind. Bright lights shone everywhere, giving a surreal daylight to the night above. Behind the terminal windows people read books, browsed through the shops, ate and drank in cafés and restaurants, in all possibility ignorant of the weather outside. The robots making flight checks on the Lakon Spaceways Transporter on the launch pad couldn't have cared less.
The flexible tunnel between the terminal and ship was manoeuvred into place; people started moving along it. Drops of water on the windows slowly ran down, sometimes coalescing with one another and moving faster. Where the tunnel met the ship a puddle was beginning to form in the slight sag of the roof. When everyone was aboard and the entrance detached a small waterfall cascaded down onto the ground.
Machinery scurried out of the way to wait in dark corners. The ship fired thrusters, vaporising the damp beneath it. Straight up for a hundred feet, then it pivoted around, hanging in mid air. Nose to the sky, it accelerated, the bright blue of its exhaust being all that was visible from the ground.
A few seconds later it dulled and blurred in the cloud cover, quickly fading out completely. Calm and rain returned to the port.
The planet was a vast dark curve below. Cloudtops glowed faintly in the light of a moon that was little more than a captured asteroid. On one far horizon was the faint red of the departing evening, on the other the imagination may have seen mountain peaks rising proud above the mist.
A point emerged, rapidly gaining height. Navigation lights winked, a blue tail stretched out beneath it. Closer to, it would be a scene of harnessed power - the violence of the engines pushing the blunt-nosed craft against the air, buffeted by the unpredictability of the troposhere and the drives' response in it. On board a steward was serving drinks to relaxed passengers whilst complex machinery maintained them in stillness.
The ship's progress gradually became less uncomfortable. Without turning by the tiniest fraction of a degree its direction changed from upwards to forwards, the dark mass of a world could be perceived as being behind and not below.
Now the vessel did alter its course, heading for a bright point of light against the starry space. A flood of light hit it, rapidly growing brighter as the sun's disc appeared from behind the planet to bathe the ship in its private dawn.
The last vestiges of atmosphere contained little warmth, half of the hull was lying in the star's radiation. Panels absorbed the heat and expanded in minutely calculated directions, advanced materials taking it with no noticeable effect. Beneath them webs of supports and carefully considered curves were pressed against each other by the pressure of the air inside. In which some people were dozing, others playing games or watching films on small screens that seemed to fill the world.
The point was brighter still, and a sharp-eyed observer would have made out a roughly cube-like structure. Occasionally it flared up to dazzle against the general darkness as a facet caught the light. The ship had brought itself to a stop relative to the space station. Here and there other craft hung in the darkness. Every now and then the space around one seemed to twist bizarrely, then it vanished leaving a quickly fading haze around that point.
The captain of the Transporter saw none of this. His eyes were fixed firmly on his ship's scanner display, where the vessels were marked as dull clubs that sometimes disappeared without fuss. When one of them started to converge on their position he spoke a few words into his mouthpiece. The voice of SysCon came back to him, reassuring.
Sliding through the void like some exotic fish, the stars reflected in its polished surfaces, the Racer drifted past the ugly transport. Behind closed ports powerful lasers were hidden, missile racks lay deep within its hull. What else might an expensive ship like that be carrying? Unknown extra weaponry and defences, an expensive cargo, an illicit haul of narcotics?
Eventually another message reached the Transporter. Again it turned, and again its drives pushed it away.
A few hours passed. The signs of movement were few - a steady hum from the engines, the star gradually growing brighter, the departure point all but vanished. Slowly the sun passed beneath the ship and grew dimmer again. The environmental controls could slacken their activity of radiating away all the heat without anyone even being aware that they were doing it.
A flash across the bows was also unnoticed, where a tiny dust particle impacted against the navigational shielding. Which had it not been present might have caused significant damage even to stressed duralium plating.