Safety Tests

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “You know that handling it isn’t an issue. You’re not allowed to come in too fast. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I have the skills,” she says.

  “Skills aren’t a problem.” I try not to raise my voice. I want to sound calm, even though I’m not calm. “There are rules.”

  “Of course there are rules,” she says.

  Warning: Your speed violates the safety protocols for the nearby space station.

  We triggered the station’s automated warning system. I glance at the controls. That means there have to be robot deflector ships nearby.

  “I hate rules,” Iva says.

  “They keep us safe,” I say as I try to contact the station. I can’t. She has taken control of communications.

  The robot deflector ships line up outside our ship. If I can see them, she can too.

  “One of those things hits us,” I say, “and you automatically fail.”

  “I won’t fail,” she says, deliberately ignoring me.

  “I’ll have to flunk you,” I say.

  “Of course you will,” she snaps. “All those stupid rules. You people and your stupid rules. This station and its stupid rules. The licensing board and its stupid rules.”

  She’s supposed to be slowing down. She’s supposed to be easing toward the station. Or to be accurate, easing toward the docking ring. But she’s heading directly toward the station. That’s why the robot ships are crowding us. They assume we’re an out-of-control ship. They’ll nudge us off the path to the station, and then everything’ll be fine.

  I don’t want to get hit. That happened on one of the first tests I ran, and it wasn’t pleasant. I orbited the Earth with that idiot driver for five rotations before the station would let us near it again.

  I touch my console—and get a shock so strong that I pull my hand away.

  She rigged it somehow. In those few seconds before I arrived, she strapped in, then rigged the console, and did it so beautifully, I didn’t see it until now.

  I shake my hand, but say nothing. Then I brace myself and reach in again.

  No shock this time. But the first shadow control is off.

  “It’s stupid, really,” she says. “You people don’t value talent or experience. All you want is someone who can follow the damn rules. Have I told you I hate the damn rules?”

  I click over to the second shadow control. It’s off too.

  Warning: We will move you off your course if you do not comply with regulations.

  “Go for it, asshole,” she says to the automated system.

  And as if it heard her, one of the robot ships brushes against us. We will now drift off course for the station.

  Except that Iva eases the ship back on its collision trajectory. And now she slows down. Waaay down. She’s actually aiming at the station.

  I try the third shadow control. I can’t use it.

  Warning: We will take control of your ship if you persist on this course.

  Another robot ship brushes us. She corrects.

  I can’t do anything. My hands ache from the continual shocks she’s sending through the system. I pull them off the controls for just a second. I try to unlatch my safety strap and it won’t come off. I can’t even shove her away from the console.

  “If you hit the station,” I say, “we’ll all die.”

  “Wow,” she says. “Did you just figure that out? And here I thought you were smarter than that.”

  A signal flashes through the console. Technically, it should have shut the ship down, but she’s managed to lock out the station too. Dammit. I was so dazzled by her skill that I didn’t even see her resetting the controls.

  She’s good. She’s better than good. She’s better than me.

  “Everyone on the station will die,” I say. “You’ll be a mass murderer.”

  “I’ll be dead,” she says. “Who will care?”

  “Then who will care how talented you are? They’re not going to say you were ignored or passed over or a great pilot. They’re going to call you crazy.”

  She glances at me sideways. Then she shrugs. She takes the ship into a perfect line with the station itself.

  I manage to activate the final shadow control. I’ve never used it before, but it works. I hit the automatic sensors through the shadow control—that’s the fastest way to regain control of a ship—and then I select the last navigation instruction sending us back to the Moon.

  The ship veers, scraping a robot ship. Iva tries to regain control. She will too. She’s that good.

  We’re not heading toward the station any more. I have no idea where we’re going and I don’t care.

  I need to stop her.

  I slam one fist on my side of the console, disconnecting all of the safety protocols. Our straps slide off.

  She grabs the controls and I push myself sideways, grabbing her. I knock her into the wall, then grab her shoulders and slam her head against the console.

  The station warnings are coming in, plus warnings from other ships, and because I’ve shut off the safety protocols the ship is officially considered out of control. That means the robots ships are going to nudge us, and some fighter ships are supposed to blow us up (but they never do, or they would have saved the life of my predecessor way back when) and someone else has to warn the nearby ships about us, because my ship—our ship—this stupid out-of-control ship—is running silent.

  I can’t care about that yet. I have to care about her. She’s reaching for me and I slam her head against the console again. She’s dazed. There isn’t a lot of room to maneuver in this cockpit, but I have to get her out of it.

  I use her chin to pull her backwards. She grabs at the pilot’s chair, wraps her foot around the base, and holds on.

  I’m half down myself, but still on my feet. I stomp on her elbow, then kick her in the stomach, dislodging her grip just briefly. She clutches my knee, ruining my balance. I hold onto my chair, and shake her off.

  Then I grab her chin again and slam her head against the floor. The smacking sound sickens me. I slam again and again until I’m certain she’s unconscious.

  I have to drag her out of here. I have to lock off the cockpit and all of the controls. This ship doesn’t have a brig. It doesn’t have anything except passenger straps for emergencies, and different environmental controls for different parts of the ship.

  The passenger sections have no cockpit access. I drag her down the hall, into the passenger section. She’s heavy, and she’s starting to moan. At least I haven’t killed her. I pull her into one of the seats, and strap her down. As I leave, I shut off the gravity.

  If she manages to free herself—which I don’t think she can do—she’ll have to deal with zero-gravity. She probably had military zero-g training, but that training happened more than a decade ago, and zero-g skills aren’t intuitive.

  I had to work in zero-g for three years—that’s part of being a Level One Military Pilot—but most military pilots never do that. And I can tell just from her attitude issues that she never had the patience or the respect for authority to go that far.

  I scurry back to the cockpit, and sit in her seat. We’re half an hour into the Moon flight, directly on the center of the route, but the messages I’m getting from other pilots are rude to say the least. Fighter ships still flank me.

  I don’t want to wear a strap at this point—I want the freedom of movement—so I turn the safety protocols on one by one. Then I let out a small sigh and send a message with my identification back to the station.

  I’m fine. Ship in my control again. Need security when we arrive.

  I get an automated response, which is just fine by me.

  Then I send a message to Connie: This last student went seriously bonko nutball. Nearly killed us all. We need more than station security to deal with her. Plus, check her medical data, see what we missed.

  By medical data, I mean the illegal stuff that we downloaded, just to see. I don’t expect to find anything, but in case we
do, I want to prevent this from happening the next time.

  I let the ship head toward the Moon for a few more minutes. I need to collect myself. My heart is racing, and I have blood on my hands. Literally. And it’s on the console and on the chair and in the cockpit itself.

  I grin like a nutball myself. I haven’t felt this alive in years. Which is probably good, considering my future is filled with lawyers and police interviews and psychologists and more tests than I want to think about.

  Not that I mind. What this means is that I’m done, and I will still get my pay raises. I get to serve out my five years without Sectioning. I’ll probably end up teaching emergency procedures or how to tell one nutcase from another (I’ll lie) or maybe I’ll become a consultant on improving regulations so that no one like Iva can slip through again.

  Then I slide down in my chair. Who am I kidding? I’m not going to do any of that stuff. I’m not a consulting kinda guy because it means I’ll have to leave the station.

  After the required post-incident time off, I’ll be right back here, fifteen minutes late every single day, steering ships and dealing with dingdongs like LaDonna.

  And I’ll be grateful for it.

  Because I don’t mind the regulations. I rather like them. They keep us safe.

  And I’m all about safety—especially my own.

  “Safety Tests” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch was first published in Edge of Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan, Solaris, 2012.

  About the Author

  International bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch has won two Hugo awards, a World Fantasy Award, and six Asimov’s Readers Choice Awards. Her latest science fiction novel is Skirmishes, a Diving Universe novel. For more information about her work, please go to kristinekathrynrusch.com.

  If you liked “Safety Tests,” you might like these works by Kristine Kathryn Rusch:

  The Disappeared

  Diving into the Wreck

  Echea

  Homecoming

  Moments