The sun kissed the horizon farewell. A pink disk escaped the night and turned pale blue to gold as it rippled over the east.

The weak morning light made little headway against the wispy clouds, but the early breeze snatched the heat from Jayce's cruiser when he opened the door, and the day held the promise of rain. At least, it did for those left planet side.

Corporate logos decorated the white skin of the hangar before them. They were symbols Tila had come to hate.

Jayce made a call and a small door opened in the hangar. A figure in white overalls acknowledged Jayce with a wave, then the small door closed and the main hangar doors opened.

'You're gonna love these,' he promised.

Ever suspicious, Tila asked, 'Why are they in the hangar? Didn't they just arrive?'

'I thought it would be best if they were kept under cover, that's all.'

'Away from prying eyes, you mean? Jayce, if these ships are going to attract any more unwanted attention...'

'Hey, trust me. Everything's fine. Anyway, that last heat was your fault, right?'

'Well...' said Malachi.

'Hey look, the door is open,' said Jayce, and he glided the cruiser forward.

It was a small hangar by commercial standards, a simple rectangle with a sloped roof. The walls nine metres tall by twenty-five wide and sixty deep, but perfect for small yachts and other pleasure craft. Anything bigger would need the facilities of a commercial spaceport for storage and maintenance. Anything bigger than that was likely to be uneconomical if not impossible to land in an atmosphere, and would most likely dock at one of the orbiting shipyards. There, smaller tenders would handle the routine duties of shuttling passengers to the surface.

The bright lights of the interior spilled out when the doors opened, bathing them and the cruiser in a diffuse white glow. Orange perimeter lights on the door frames cast dancing shadows on the three covered ships in the middle.

On the left side of the hangar, hooked up to a cables and pipes, was a private yacht undergoing routine maintenance. The sleek personal cruiser whispered luxury with every line and curve, but the effect was offset by the support scaffold braced against its starboard hull, and the exposed water tanks lining the sides of the ship.

But it was the ships in the centre of the hangar that called to them. Tarpaulins of military grey covered each one and hinted at dagger-like shapes beneath.

'Wait until you see these bad boys!' Jayce said excitedly. Then added to Ellie, 'I hope you like them.'

'But you still haven't told us what they are,' she said.

'Help me with this and you'll see,' said Jayce. He stepped up to the first sheet. Malachi stretched out an arm to help but pain pulled him up short.

'Still painful?' Tila asked him.

Malachi shook his head. 'Getting better, but still hurts.'

'Here, let me.' Tila took two big handfuls of the tarp and pulled. As the cloth passed over the tail of the ship gravity took over. The tarp gathered momentum and the fabric slid forward and to one side, rippling to the floor like dirty cream.

Ellie gasped.

'Whoa,' said Malachi.

Tila looked at Jayce, eyes wide, questioning, demanding, unsure. Suspicious.

Jayce winked at her. 'Do you trust me now?'

Tila blinked at the sight before her. 'Maybe.'

Jayce shrugged. 'Close enough.'

Malachi circled the ship, inspecting it with his critical engineer's eye.

It was eight metres long with stubby wings swept backward from below the foremost point of the cockpit and extending beyond the main thruster by another half-metre. Each wing angled down about fifteen degrees.

That wasn't the only design anomaly. The engine cowling was bigger than normal for a ship this size and the cockpit area smaller.

The wings seemed to disappear inside the hull where they met.

Next to the smooth lines of the yacht the ship looked almost blocky. It was all angles and edges, not curves. It made sense, from a physics point of view. No ship designed solely for space travel needed to be aerodynamic, but consumers preferred the aesthetics. Once in space, and all other things being equal, the yacht would be no faster than a metal box, but it was far more pleasing to the eye.

Malachi balanced on his toes to get a better look at the letters stencilled above the wing. 'V-K-Y dash zero four dash E-X,' he read out. He turned to Jayce with an expression of suspicion and excitement. 'These are experimental ships?'

'Nice, right? You see before you experimental Valkyries number two, three, and four.'

'Experimental?' said Tila.

'It's only a designation. They work fine, they're fully operational. These puppies were part of a late stage pre-production run but the Valkyrie project was abandoned. Instead of taking these designs forward they rolled the developments into other ships. These have been sitting in storage ever since.'

'How long?' said Malachi.

'About a year.'

'A year without flight time? Can I check the power cores?'

'Is that a problem?' Tila asked Malachi.

'The power cores or the ships?'

'Either. Both.'

'Probably not but I want to be sure. What Jayce described is not unusual. All sorts of designs are prototyped which don't go into production for one reason or another.'

'Like?'

'Oh, like new tech, budgets, competition, customer demand.'

'Politics,' added Jayce.

'You're sure these ships are safe?' said Tila.

Malachi nodded without looking at her. 'If they made four of them, sure. They would be specced out just like full production designs. The experimental tag only means they're not in mass production.'

'So, what are you checking the cores for?' said Tila.

'It's just a routine. Long-term storage without maintenance can degrade the efficiency of the energy curve.'

'I'll pretend I know what that means, shall I?'

Malachi grinned. 'You can pretend.' He pushed with his fingers through the bundle of cables plugged into the belly of the yacht and selected one. Isolating this cable, he unplugged the bundle and dragged them across the floor to the nearest Valkyrie. He opened the maintenance panel below the engine and connected the single cable. The others hung limp like wilted flowers.

'So, Tila, tell me,' said Jayce as he leaned with exaggerated casualness against the ship. 'Do you trust me now?'

Tila frowned. This was just another surprise in a day of unexpected news, and she didn't like it. 'Maybe,' she said.

'What about you Ellie, you haven't said much since we got here,' said Jayce.

Jayce was right, Ellie had only watched. Tila saw in the ships only the possible dangers. Malachi looked at them with professional curiosity, but to Ellie the naked silhouette of the ship showed her just one thing - a restless, desperate machine that craved speed.

It was the third time Ellie had fallen in love since they arrived.

'I want one,' she said.

Malachi snapped the access panel back into place.

'The engine checks out. It's in perfect condition. This one is good to go. I'll check the others.'

Ellie pressed her hands against the ship like a child looking at toys through a window on Christmas eve. 'How fast are they?' she said.

Malachi answered as he dragged the cables to the second ship. 'Let's see, it took us about a day to get to Parador from the Celato beacon. These ships could do that in a few hours,' said Malachi as he connected the second ship. Ellie grinned. 'Don't get too excited, Ellie. In open space it's not going to seem any faster,' he added.

'So VKY means Valkyrie?' Tila asked Jayce.

'It's the code name for the project.'

'What's a Valkyrie?'

Jayce shrugged. 'I don't know. It might be a military thing. Or it might be an old earth word. My guess is the designers picked it because they thought it sounded cool.'

'These ships are military?'

'Only originally. Don't worry, they're not armed. I'm sure any military tech has been decommissioned. Anyway, I think they were designed for recon, not combat.'

'Malachi?' said Tila. 'What is Jayce getting us into?'

Malachi had just completed his check on the third ship. 'I think it's okay. The diagnostics check out. I've heard about this sort of thing happening before, pre-production ships in private hands.'

'But they're not in private hands, are they? Nothing Jayce has is really private, it's all owned by one of the corporations - including these.' She rapped her knuckles on the hull. It barely made a noise.

'You don't want to take something from the corporations?' said Malachi.

'I don't want their handouts.'

'Who said anything about handouts? They don't know about this. It's not charity if they don't know about it, if you know what I mean,' said Malachi with a sly smile.

Understanding dawned on Tila's face. 'Malachi this place has made you bad. But I suppose, in that case...'

'It would be rude not to,' said Malachi. He winked.

'Why don't you try them on for size? The cockpits might be smaller than you're used to though,' said Jayce.

'Why is that? The engines don't need to take up that much room,' said Malachi.

'Normal engines don't.'

'No way! Jump drives in a ship this small?' He turned to Tila. 'Do you know what this means? We can go anywhere we like. We don't have to charter jumps or pay anyone. We can even make them pay us! These ships are freedom.'

'That's right.' Jayce grinned his familiar grin. He folded his arms and winked at Tila. 'Hey Tila, do you trust me now?'

Tila finally graced him with a half-smile. 'Maybe.'