The Witches of Ne'arth (The Star Wizards Trilogy Book 2) by Joseph Schembrie

hut, he reflected:  Introverted .  Yes, maybe there was some truth to that even now.  He needed people – desperately so – yet at the same time, even on a new planet, somehow relationships often ended up depleting him.  He sensed it was his own fault, something inside him that had been wired or programmed wrong by his genes at birth.  If he could ever figure out how that worked, he thought, it would change his life more dramatically than even going to another planet had done.   
    As he returned to the village and staggered into his hut, he realized that he was very tired.  He asked Ivan to stop stimulating him awake, and before he could ask to be knocked out, he was out.
    He was awakened the following morning by a tap at his door.  A messenger brought a note from Prin, that the representative of the Leaf was waiting.  Layal packed him a breakfast of bread and cheese, which Matt gulped down on the road as he hurried. 
    When Matt arrived at the hangar, Prin introduced him to Colonel Krobart, whose scowl deepened as he inspected Matt's optic blue jump suit.  Garish , Matt thought, seeing the echo of Savora's remark in Krobart's squint.     
    “So this is the famous Wizard,” Krobart said.  “Very young.”
    Matt was speechless, and so it was Andra who rescued him: “Shall we start the flight?”
    Prin opened a window and began shouting orders both inside and outside.  Andra climbed into the gondola and reviewed the pilot's pre-flight checklist with Savora.  Bok had to be shooed away.  Krobart grumbled as he ascended the steps, and grumbled more when he saw Andra at the wheel.
    “You have a woman steering,” Krobart said.  “This is most unconventional.”
    Prin looked like he had a sharp comment, but instead resumed giving orders. 
    After weeks of flight tests, launching the ship was routine.  The hangar doors were swung wide and the mooring lines were loosed.  The ground crew, a core of expert regulars swollen to a small mob gathered from volunteers around the base, towed the airship from the hanger to beneath the open sky.  Taking position at the rear of the control room at the fore of the gondola, Matt watched how swiftly and efficiently Savora moved between gauges and controls as Andra called the checklist items. 
    Prin hollered out the window at the ground crew tending the engines, and they spun the props at Andra's call.  The twin blades of the engine propellers growled and whirred into blurs.  The ground crew hands released the mooring lines.  The bags of external ballast were dropped and the ship ascended.   
    The roofs of huts sank below their feet.  The roof of the hangar, which was only a tethered sheet of Sarkassian silk, rippled in the breeze of their prop-wash  The cluster of buildings that formed the base became encompassed in a single gaze.  With their ascent, the forest seemed to encroach and swallow the signs of habitation. 
    “Everything looks so small!” Krobart exclaimed.  Aware of their stares, he quickly donned his scowl again.    
    “Let's take her over the village,” Prin said to Andra.  “True bearing one-forty, quarter-throttle.”
    Andra spun the piloting wheel and nudged the engine levers, her ears trained by Geth to detect the proper pitch.  Savora's eyes swept the gauge boards in a methodical pattern, all business-like, oblivious to the scenery. 
    They puttered past the base fence, across the field and over the tree tops.  Heading south, they steered above the Oksiden Road.  The waters of Fish Lake glistened in the dawn light and winding snakes made of the smoke of the village cooking fires intertwined in the clear sky.  The road to the east disappeared into the Dark Forest, and above the haze in the northeast, the Fuji-like cone of Mount Skawful simmered.      
    “One can see everything,” Krobart said.  “Amazing!”
    The fields were spotted with harvesters, who dropped their baskets and waved as the shadow of the airship