“Captain’s log, date: H5N1/307. I have maneuvered the Coelacanth out of its docking coils and begun the pre-flight checklist.” Thirty-seven green lights flicked on. “Checklist complete, all systems nominal. Moving to docking harbor exit. Beginning Faster than Light Object Projector.” The captain flicked a blinking switch. A communications channel crackled into life. “All systems functional, Flight Controller,” said the captain, “I await your clearance.”

“Clearance granted, captain,” the flight controller’s voice gurgled over the Com channel. “Good luck out there, sir.” The channel cut out and the cockpit was silent, save for a slight gurgle escaping out of the captain’s gills. He reached out a very slightly webbed finger and pressed an invitingly large red button, and gritted both sets of teeth together.

“Here we go again…” he muttered. The bulky ship hummed into life, its tail end began a rhythmic back-and-forth motion, and the ship slowly turned onto its side. Four fin like protrusions extended out on the dorsal and pectoral sides of the Coelacanth’s hull. Engines on each fin shuddered and began a complicated series of bursts and shutoff cycles, causing the ship to move up and down spastically.

“FLOP cycle has begun, setting coordinates.” His fingers tapped a sequence of numbers symbols on the interface in front of him. His thumb slipped after one particularly sharp jolt from the FLOP engines. “Oops. That’s not right,” he grumbled and redid the sequence. “Alright, that’s better…” The ship flopped onto its other side and disappeared into the stars. The captain was pushed into the back of his seat before the ship’s stabilizers kicked in. “Everything’s fine…” he thought to himself.

“… I think.”

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