The rough shudder of the takeoff run vanished. The landing gear left the ice. The aircraft climbed smoothly into the polar air, its nose angled upward at a comfortable ten-degree pitch, its wings biting cleanly into the thin high-latitude atmosphere. The airframe steadied. The trembling stopped. The roar of the engines softened into a smooth, sustained thrum.
Stan let out a breath.
Beside him, Camilla was leaning slightly forward against her seatbelt, her red eyes fixed on the world falling away beneath them through the cockpit window.
She was smiling, she genuinely was...
The polar plain shrank below them. The compacted white terrain that had seemed endless from the ground revealed itself, from altitude, as a small pale wedge at the edge of a vast dark ocean. The horizon curved. The sky above deepened from pale blue into something richer.
"...I have not flown in a very long time," she said quietly. "Not like this."
"How did you fly, in the old era?"
