Chapter one, may 14th, 1998.

"Sparrow one, braking."
"Sparrow two, roger that, we're in position to move in as soon as you hit the guard shack."
"One is on the way, I see some fighters on the way, so we'd better get moving. Hitting the place in three minutes from... now!"
"Copy, we're ready for you."
Shamiram leaned forward against the G's of braking, considerably dampened by the ships artificial inertia field, and looked down. She was seated in a pilots chair, which appeared to be suspended in mid-air a few feet ahead of the ship she was flying, and even though she knew this was just an illusion created by the viewscreens covering all the walls except the rear one, and even the floor under her chair, she still couldn't quite shake the feeling that she should feel wind in her hair. She didn't, though, and had she indeed been outside she ship during the braking sequence she wouldn't have time to feel the wind before she'd be burned to cinders. She brought the ship around slightly, aiming for the jungle somewhere in central america, where didn't really matter. They'd agreed to help the CIA free one of their covert ops teams from this camp, run by some drug lord as far as she knew, but then why would they need her? Regular attack aircraft could do this just as well, so something out of the ordinary must be going on here. She soon found out what. As the hull cooled down from the extreme temperatures atmospheric braking gave it, she felt the probing fingers of radar beams touch her, almost as if she was the ship itself. And in a sense she was, since her brain was connected directly to it, and unless she concentrated on being human, she felt like a huge cylinder of half-living metal, feeling the rush of the atmosphere and the radiation patterns around her.

She adjusted the ships radar signature to about that of a large bird, but this didn't seem to fool the search radar. It switched frequencies and found her again, on a shorter wavelength this time. Before she had time to react and shape the hull to minimize the signature, the scanners told her that four missiles had lauched, seeking her hot signature against the cold sky. Someone was talking to her on the secure radio frequency, but she ignored it for now, scanning the missiles with a narrow beam of most of the energy the sensors could put out. Nuclear. This wasn't your average drug lord hangout, she decided, and nuclear missiles, if big enough, might actually take her down, or at least hurt her (she couldn't help thinking of the ship as her own body now) badly enough so that she'd have to abort to orbit for repairs.

"See how you handle this," she thought, and sent the ship hurtling for the ocean below. The missiles that were rising to intercept her followed mindlessly, easily picking out the heat of the ship against the deep sea background. She barely avoided touching the surface as she pulled out of the dive at a ridiculous speed, but the missiles had no problems following the maneuver. They did however have some problems flying through the huge plume of water created by the ships passage, and exploded harmlessly (except for the local maritime life forms) right on the surface. Satisfied, she turned and headed for the camp. She could still make it in time if she poured on the coal.

The CIA men, if that's what they were, never even saw the ship pass. It shot by overhead so fast that it was gone by the time they'd looked up. The laser beam directed at the guard shack wasn't visible to the human eye, but delivered so much energy in that small area that the shed blew up as if it'd been packed with dynamite and someone dropped a match. They stormed in through the now unguarded gates, firing and throwing grenades as they went. All in all a great show, but Shamiram didn't know it, she was already accelerating back to orbit high above.

After docking came the confusing sensation of letting go. She took her hands off the contact globes on the armrests of her chair, and immediately returned to her own body again. The feeling of insecurity and loss was as great as ever, and she remained seated for a few minutes before she managed to get a hold of herself and stagger out into the corridor linking her to the station, EarthHub. The inertia field steadied her in the nonexistent gravity, and she made a mental note to find out what that mission was all about, and why the captain had agreed to do it in the first place. But first off to bed, after checking that no messages were waiting for her on the neural net (comparable to the Earthling Internet, but the neural net connected all the crew on EarthHub and required to interface, just your brain with the small enhancements they all had). None were, and she stumbled into her cabin, collapsed on the bed, and was soon deep asleep. Her brain made sure she didn't dream or at least didn't remember any of it.