Starclimber
Chapter One
The Celestial Tower
Rising into the wind, I flew, Paris spread before me.
For the first time in my life I was at the helm, though my ship was a humble one, and not my own. Aboard the Atlas we didn't even use terms like "captain" or "first mate." This was no fancy airship liner or private yacht; she was just an aerocrane, forty feet from stem to stern, but she was mine to command for the summer, and I loved every second of it.
"Elevators up five degrees, please," I told Christophe, my copilot. "Throttle to one half."
As the drone of the engines increased in pitch, I put the ship into a gentle starboard turn. We climbed, and I brought the Atlas about so that we faced the construction site. Though I had gazed upon it almost every day for two weeks now, the view still filled me with awe.
Rising three kilometers above the earth was the base of the Celestial Tower. Massive metal piers and arches supported its platforms, each one large enough to hold a city. The third platform had just been completed, and work on the next level was well under w ... read full excerpt from: Starclimber ebook
