That made her smile a little bitterly. "I've had enough of those; you won't have to worry about that with me."
"Yeah, no. Instead, you don't have enough muscle to load cargo, and honey, we fly places I wouldn't take a woman." He was waiting for her reaction, and she refused to give him one that'd give him an excuse to kick her out the door.
"So I'll get bumped, and have a worse schedule than the guys, and I'll be loading cargo when bumped until I build the muscle." She shrugged. "I'm the new hire, why would I expect any different?"
"Sure, now. In three years?"
"In three years you'll still have me by the ID Cards." Which was a polite way of saying he'd have her by the short and curlies. Her lips twisted up, as she was tempted to see how he'd react if she used the cruder phrase. Outfit like this, probably just fine, but she shouldn't tempt fate in the bloody interview.
He shook his head, but there was a hint of a smile in the way his eyes crinkled up. "You're not the only one here like that, honey. We're a long way from the centers of power, and a lot of people come out looking for a fresh start." After a moment, he said, "I want five years. Training pilots is expensive, and so are fresh starts."
The hair on the back of her neck lifted. Any other place and time she’d be happy to sink into an offer of safety and stability… well, no, the feeder jet that she’d known was on shaky ground when she walked in, and spent her entire short career waiting to be furloughed was the exception to prove that rule. But here, now, in a land where she was being hunted, with a war impending as soon as the invasion force got its bureaucratic act together? It was a trap closing around her. She didn’t have anything better, so she kept her face and body language calm, and nodded while hoping she wasn’t making the worst possible choice. "Yes, sir."
With that, the mood in the room changed. Russ loosened up his shoulders, smiled, and then hooked a thumb at a chair. "Sling the files off that and take a seat. Want any coffee?" As she did, he turned to a coffeemaker she hadn't noticed. "You take the froufrou shit?"
"Black's good. Unless you're using boiled-up river mud, in which case I'll take the froufrou to hide the local clay." She picked up the files as he laughed. "Where d’you want these?"
"Desk is good. So, tell me about your flying experience."
Half an hour and two cups of coffee later, he walked her down the stairs to the front, headed to the sim room. As they passed the pilot lounge, Russ called out, "Nik! Need you out here!"
"Sir?" A pilot built like a small mountain in a loose, sloppy track suit came out of the pilot room, catching up with them. His skin was dark brown, like a weathered bronze statue, and strangely pocked and ridged. She noted that, wondering at it, and met his eyes with a nod, then looked back at Russ.
"Amber, Nik. Amber's our latest pilot candidate. Nik's one of my best pilots. I need you to fly a sim with her." He introduced them as they walked down the hall.
"Roj." He nodded, and stuck out a hand that was subtly twisted all wrong and missing two fingers. She shook his hand firmly, and he smiled, revealing perfect false white teeth. The motion made his face fold and crease oddly, and she realized he was covered with burn scars. His smile froze, and then he frowned, stopping her and reaching up to finger the fresh rip on her jacket. She couldn't stop the flinch as he touched the bandage beneath. "Yeah, that's gonna hurt tomorrow."
"It already does, now." She grimaced. "Won't stop me from flying." Russ had stopped, and turned to watch them; she knew this was a test, even if she didn't know how to pass it.
"Little thing like that, no. Four inches further over, and…" He rubbed the tacky drying blood on his fingers, and touched her neck, watching to see how she'd react. She held his gaze, controlling the flinch as he continued, "It wouldn't have been so little."
Test or not, there was honest concern in his face. Michelle put her hand on his, and said lightly, "That's more than four inches." As she peeled his hand away, temptation won. She dropped her voice and said, "Most men make errors in estimating inches the other way, you know."
Nik had a roaring belly laugh that filled the corridor, and it was truly infectious. As she laughed, he slapped her on the other shoulder. "I like this one, Russ!"
The chief pilot nodded, and rapped on the door to the sim. "Good. Miss Porter, through here. Let's see how you fly." From his smile, she'd passed the sniff test.
19
The sim was set up inside a replica cockpit, with hydraulics to simulate full motion as they went through the scenarios. She's seen some that were just a holo set up around a chair, and some that skipped the hydraulics and just ran off your internal nerve net. She despised those. This was the best of the lot, teaching pilots the tactile touch and feel as close as they could get. As they signed in, and she and Nik walked into the sim proper, he said, "Have you ever flown sim before?"
"Here and there." If he didn't recognize her, and the chief pilot hadn't introduced her, she wasn't going to enlighten him.
"Recognize this one?" He was only half-teasing.
"Yep." She stopped as he went for the right seat, where the junior crew member traditionally sat co-pilot. "I'm left seat?"
"This isn't a high stress test, this is seeing how you fly. Were you left seat on your last job?" He paused before sitting down.
"It was single-seat, so…" She shrugged. "I can take either."
Nik's eyebrows went up, as only the high end and low end in the industry routinely ran single-seat. He gestured to the left seat. "Take the pilot seat, then. I'll be handling settings; we're not testing your knowledge of the C-223's specific procedures."
She nodded, and buckled herself into the seat, checked her reach on all switches and fuses, then snugged straps and rechecked reach. Nik watched with no commentary, but Russ's voice came from the back, by the sim operator's seat. "You're the first civvie in a long time I've seen snug straps."
"Yeah, well." She was distracted by plugging in her implants, with an unfamiliar interface. "I've had a few really rough rides. Spend a couple weeks walking funny before the bone bruises heal, and see how long it takes ‘til you stop snugging them down." Too late, she realized that had come out far grumpier than she should sound in an interview. She covered her embarrassment by diving into the interface and working her way through the system in a full check, bringing every system up, noting variance, and then setting it to idle or standby as needed. Nobody expected a pilot to talk while doing that.
When she focused again, a glowing checklist and statistics pulsed gently in her vision over the holoscreen set up to imitate the windscreen. The cockpit was alive and humming, and Nik was hanging back on the controls, ghosting her in the system and on the physical stick. "Don't trust a single system, do you?"
"No." She frowned at him.
He smiled back at her. "Good. I tell the boys, what you trust blindly can and will burn you."
"Heh." She wondered idly which one had burned him. Not her business, so she instead pulled up weather and frequencies, and blanked the rest to look out front and side. "Are we getting pushback?"
"No, we load on the ramp in bays, so when you're ready you can power straight up and pull out." His voice was soft and neutral, watching and waiting.
"Makes sense. What's our route today?" At his silence, she looked over, and brought up the menu. "There's nothing loaded in active, and six session parameters saved."
Nik started laughing even as there was a curse from the back. "You're not supposed to be able to access that. And Russ needs to type faster, right, chief?"
"Or do your power-up slower. You're supposed to fumble around finding systems." Russ replied, keyboard clicking rapidly. "And you're not supposed to be able to access that menu! Ignore it!"
"Mmm-hmm, and trust the system?" She teased, looking askance back at Russ. "You're not paying me enough to half-ass it when I can do it right instead."
"Hah! When's the last time you were a copilot?" Nik asked, as Russ finally brought the airport up in the screens. It was their base, set
to late evening.
"Eight years ago." She replied, automatically checking the area clear, and securing doors, flashing her running lights before turning on her beacon, and starting up the APU. Those would warn any laggard rampers to scurry out of the range of her jet blast before she fired up the main engines.
"And the last time you had a copilot?" He was laughing, as she ran the start checklist with eyes and hands and implants, confirming everything on visual and tactile.
"Four years ago?" Engines started, transponder set to active, and she called clearance delivery by reflex, then ground for a taxi to the active. "Oh, I'm sorry. What should I have you be doing?"
"About half of this. Do you even remember how to have a copilot, honey?" He waved off her apology. "You're doing a magnificent job handling the workload, but there's a reason there are two of us. You don't have to do it all yourself."
"Understood; I'll learn your workflow." She bared her teeth at him. "Want to switch seats?"
"Wouldn't dream of it." He waved out the windscreen. "We're going to do a straight-out departure. Take her off as normal."
"Yes, sir." She started the roll. "She's heavy. You run max gross takeoff weight as standard?"
"If we've got the cargo to do it, we will." He replied, and she nodded.
"Keep 'em flying. Know that one." A quick taxi later, with no other traffic at the airport, she had weather and local airspace pulled up for review, and took off. With a long runway, it was a low-stress takeoff and easy climb-out, with minimal stress on the airframe or engines. Sim wasn't strictly the same, not the right wind and engine noise, but damned if she wouldn't take the opportunity to make it as perfect as possible.
On the long climb-out to assigned altitude, Nik said conversationally, "You fly nights or days?"
"Yes. Long-haul; it doesn't matter which I take off in, it'll be the other by the time I land." That was, she belatedly realized, an interview question instead of cockpit chatter. "Does cargo ever move during the day, around here?"
"All of the smaller pickups and drop-offs are daytime. Some of our strips are pretty much a goat track, or the town's main road. Got to land those all during the day. Only the main routes move at night. And overseas… Well, we normally ship up through Anueterriza for the transoceanic, but ever since they painted a big fat target on their back, we're shifting operations to here." He shook his head, and swung the conversation away from that. "How many years has it been since you landed off airport?"
"Long enough I'd be better off claiming I'd never done it at all." She replied, and shook her head. "That's a perishable skill."
"We'll put you in a refresher course. You'll catch up." Nik said pleasantly. "Intercept the 185 radial on the FRI beacon, please."
"185 radial, Foxtrot Romeo India, affirm." She pulled up the chart and frequencies, tuning it in and verifying it, and then pulling up an intercept course as she smoothly banked toward it.
Nik let silence fill the cockpit, and the singing tension between her shoulder blades started to relax at the comfortable quiet. He finally broke it, saying, "You've been flying pax."
"Yes." She didn't know where he was going with that, so she didn't elaborate.
"Cargo's not going to care how gentle your banks are."
She smiled, then. "Depends on how rough your air, and how sensitive your cargo."
"You haven't been flying hazmat, not with pax aboard. Civvies don't do that." He paused, and a knowing grin crept across his face. "Where have you encountered any rough air, honey? And how rough can you take?" The last was delivered with wiggled eyebrows. She'd invited the teasing earlier, in the hall, and he was paying her back now. If he was expecting her to flounder, though, he didn't know she'd grown up with fishing crews.
She smiled back, playing innocent at first. "You get it all over, in the jet levels. As for how rough… there's no prize for doing structural damage. You do that, and you don't get to fly that bird again." She locked eyes with Nik, and winked.
Nik was a good stick; he kept his hands and feet clear of the controls when belly laughing and didn't send any extraneous inputs via implant - only a bright joyous static of mirth. "Alright, honey, you win this round.."
"Great, what did I win? The rest of the sim on moderate turbulence shading to severe, or the sudden electrical malfunction?" She replied sourly, and Nik just laughed harder.
Three approaches and landings later, they made their way out of the sim, and Russ waved them over to the far corner of the room, where a small table for briefing and debriefing had been crammed. "All right, Nik. You think she'll fit in?"
Having the check airman asked so openly in front of her was new to her - but she kept her mouth shut and watched them. Nik was silent a while, jaw working as he chewed it over, and then nodded slowly. "I wouldn't put her with Jodie or DW. The rest of the crew, she'll do."
"All right, then. Forget you ever saw her." Russ turned to her as she was trying to figure that out, and held out a small package that screamed military, right down to the bio-containment warning symbol next to an inventory item number. "Miss Porter, you will take the door to our right. Go up the stairs, and on the first door to the left is a closet with uniforms. Pull five your size. Go directly to the showers, without stopping, or talking; avoid being seen if possible. Once in the shower, you will use the auto-injector. The other two tubes are hair dye; I assume you know how to use those." He paused, and waited for her response.
"Door to the right, up, uniforms in first door to left. Pull 5 sets. Proceed to shower, use autoinjector, then dye my hair." She took it, and cocked her head, weighing him. "What's in the injector?"
"A fresh start, that'll prevent any sniffers from tagging you." That meant it'd change the DNA of her skin, and possibly hair as it grew out. Possibly, depending on the packet, even her voice and fingerprints. Which was why Nik had been told to forget… not her, but her appearance.
"Thank you." She nodded, and tucked it into a pocket.
"You're welcome." Russ rolled his head to the right, cracking his neck. "There's a bunk room by the showers; hit the sack and grab a couple hours of sleep. I'll have admin process your paperwork and get you on the training schedule tomorrow." He held out his hand, and she shook it. "Welcome aboard, Miss Porter."
"Thank you, sir." Since he didn't look like he was going to move, she stepped around him and left by the indicated door. In the privacy of the stairwell, she took a moment to run her hands over her face, tangling them in her hair, and take a deep breath. This was it, then; she was in. It felt like she'd dropped an impossibly heavy load, and sent her staggering up the stairs, weak-kneed in the shock of the change, all out of adrenaline and ready to collapse.
She was back to learning a new airplane, and flying; she'd be all right. She hoped fervently that Blondie was, too, and the rest of the team - but there was no way to find out, other than breaking the cover they'd taken fire to create for her. She was on autopilot by the time she pulled out the uniforms, hygiene kit, and laundry bag, and stumbled to the showers. The showers were in a common room between two sets of bathrooms - one male, one marked unisex, also clearly plumbed for the men. She figured it made sense; a military crew would be majority male - and wondered who got teased at using the unisex bathroom. Fortunately for the chief pilot's instructions and her shattered nerves, nobody else was around; only lingering smell of washed bodies, aftershave, and soap attested to their use.
Figuring out the crew dynamic could wait; it's wasn't her problem right now. Michelle skinned out of her clothes, and stuffed everything not going into the shower into a locker. One towel off a stack later, she took herself, her hygiene kit, and the autoinjector into the required handicap shower with its fold-down bench. And if she collapsed on the bench under the hot water and shook, and cried, well, no one else would know.
An hour later, her hair freshly dark and braided, she dressed in the cargo uniform and finally a look in the mirror. The nanos would take several hours to do thoroughly whatever they were program
med to, but she could already tell her skin was changing. Her face already looked subtly off, in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on. She put a hand on the mirror, and watched the not-quite-stranger smile. New skin, new start. It was going to be all right. "I got this." She rapped her knuckles on the mirror, grabbed her pack, and headed out.
20
"Hey, fresh meat. I'm Rock." The amused voice yanked her attention out of the operating handbook for the C-9A5E, and she blinked up at the wall of muscle topped with a heavily gray beard and silver hair standing in front of her, and focused on the massive paw he was holding out. She stood up, and put out her own hand. The friendly ping she'd expected hadn't come, and she covered her confusion by saying, "Amber Porter."
He nodded, and shook hands. As he did, she realized it was a prosthetic, with all the give of nuskin on metal. When she gave her best firm handshake, his frown eased a little. Looking dramatically left and right to make sure they were alone in the pilot lounge, he dropped his voice to a mock whisper. "You'd think he'd get more creative, but no." At her cocked eyebrow, a brief grin flashed white teeth in the depth of the beard. "I'm Rocky Rhodes."
She groaned, and rolled her eyes. "What, were you driving the ice cream truck?"
"Me? The kids would all run screaming. Naw, hospital cafeteria." He hooked a chair with his foot and pulled it out, dropping gracelessly in. "Bet he picked me for you 'cause I told him we couldn't fit any trainees into the right seat when I'm in the cockpit."
"That, and I haven't got the body mass to play human forklift when loading and unloading cargo."
"Aw, naw, you get the pax to help." He waved that off.
Going Ballistic Page 11